Description
Book SynopsisThis collection forges new ground in the discussion of aristocratic and royal women, their relationships with their objects, and medieval geography. It explores how women’s geographic and familial networks spread well beyond the borders that defined men’s sense of region and how the movement of their belongings can reveal essential information about how women navigated these often-disparate spaces. Beginning in early medieval Scandinavia, ranging from Byzantium to Rus', and multiple lands in Western Europe up to 1500, the essays span a great spatio-temporal range. Moreover, the types of objects extend from traditionally studied works like manuscripts and sculpture to liturgical and secular ceremonial instruments, icons, and articles of personal adornment, such as textiles and jewelry, even including shoes.
Trade Review"This is an important work for medievalists, but sufficient contextual detail is provided to enable the nonspecialist to approach each topic, a significant feature in a work covering such a range of material and one which expands its usefulness to researchers in other fields, most notably court and women’s studies." - Sara Smart, University of Exeter. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIV, No. 1 pp. 273-275. "[...] this book is an important contribution to the study of medieval women, demonstrating the utility of ideas around the agency of objects for supplementing and revising extant evidence about their worlds. [...] the strengths of this volume suggest the need for continued attention to movement and mobility at all levels of society and for many different kinds of aesthetic objects." - Michelle K. Oing, Stanford University. In: Speculum, 96/4 (October 2021), pp. 1178-1180. "The chapters are fluently written and well-researched[...]The capacity to reveal new geographies, to show how women and their things created places united across space, interlacing diverse spheres, is the major contribution of this volume and opens the door to further studies of medieval and early modern women through the lens of materiality in motion". Erin J. Cambell in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2021. "Given such broad geographical and temporal variety, it is worth noting the consistently high quality of the essays. This is surely due in part to the efforts of the editors, who appear to have been quite involved in the shaping and level of finish of each essay as well as in the conception of the volume as a whole. A sense of commitment, common purpose, enjoyment, and collaborative engagement comes through in the many cross-references that populate the footnotes [...] Moving Women Moving Objects is excellent in itself and sets a high standard for future collaborative work on “object itineraries” that is global in its reach." -Sarah McNamer, Georgetown University. In:The Medieval Review
Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments List of Figures Contributors Introduction: Women and the Circulation of Material Culture: Crossing Boundaries and Connecting Spaces Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany 1 Mapping Gold in Motion: Women and Jewelry from Early Medieval Scandinavia Nancy L. Wicker 2 Remembrance and Erasure of Objects Belonging to Rus’ Princesses in Medieval Western Sources: the Cases of Anastasia Iaroslavna’s “Saber of Charlemagne” and Anna Iaroslavna’s Red Gem Talia Zajac 3 Symbolic Geography in the Tomb and Seal of Berengaria of Navarre, Queen of England Kathleen Nolan 4 Matilda of Saxony’s Luxury Objects in Motion: Salving the Wounds of Conflict Jitske Jasperse 5 Female Networks and the Circulation of a Late Medieval Illustrated Health Guide Jennifer Borland 6 Saint Birgitta of Sweden: Movement, Place, and Visionary Experience Benjamin Zweig 7 The Place of a Queen/A Queen and Her Places: Jeanne of Navarre’s Kalila and Dimna as a Political Manuscript in Early Fourteenth-Century France Amanda Luyster 8 Of Movement, Monarchs, and Manuscripts: the Case for Jeanne II of Navarre’s Picture Bible as a Geopolitical Bridge between Paris and Pamplona Julia Finch 9 The Personal Geography of a Dowager Queen: Isabella of France and Her Inventory Anne Rudloff Stanton 10 Moving Possessions and Secure Posthumous Reputation: the Gifts of Jeanne of Burgundy (ca. 1293–1349) Marguerite Keane 11 Valentina Visconti’s Trousseau: Mapping Identity through the Transport of Jewels Diane Antille 12 Moving Women and Their Moving Objects: Zoe (Sophia) Palaiologina and Anna Palaiologina Notaras as Cultural Translators Lana Sloutsky 13 The Shoes of an Infanta: Bringing the Sensuous, Not Sensible, “Spanish Style” of Catherine of Aragon to Tudor England Theresa Earenfight
