Welcome!

Welcome to Medieval Herstory, a repository for all of my ramblings about medieval women. 2ish years ago I started writing quick Facebook posts about women I came across during my MA studies. The posts were never meant to be super detailed, just a list of fun things I thought other people might also find interesting. Some of them were done during Women’s History Month, some were done because I got a little over-excited, and more than a few were because I got a liiiiiiitle bit drunk on a Friday night and HAD to tell people about history shit RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

So um. Here we are. Moving forward I’ll be putting my rambles in both places. Maybe people beyond my circle of friends will find and enjoy them too. Guess we’ll see.

This site isn’t really intended to be super serious or academic. If you’re looking for something long and detailed to read, I would direct you to something like Queens of Infamy instead. This is just me being excited and throwing out some bullet points about women I think have been unfairly remembered in popular imagination or forgotten altogether.

We should probably lay out some expectations, yeah? Here’s what you won’t find on this blog:

• Footnotes. I love footnotes! I read them obsessively. But in general I’ll be writing from memory, and just can’t be bothered. If I have handy links, I’ll put them in (or add them later, real talk).
• Academic jargon. I can write in that style. I choose not to.

What will you find? I’m so glad you asked.

• Enthusiasm. I fucking looooooove medieval history. I think it’s completely fascinating. I love learning about what people believed back then, what they ate, what they wore, the letters they wrote and the absolute bullshit they made up and wrote down as their own ‘history’. It’s all great. And in case it wasn’t obvious, I super love medieval women. More than that, I’m one of those people who very much wants others to learn new things and love them as much as I do, which makes me extremely annoying to live with but perhaps good at sharing with others. WE’LL SEE.
• Slight disorganization. I’m all over the place with what I choose to write about, and it very much hinges on what caught my interest on a given day. While my research interest and area of ‘expertise’ is women in medieval England, I also read and get excited about French queens, Byzantine saints, German nuns (although it wasn’t ‘Germany’ yet), and god knows what else. Consistently inconsistent is probably what we should accept as the reality here.
• Bad, bad, bad language. I’m someone who swears horribly in real life – my children give me shit for it – and that comes across in my writing. I could edit the swearing out but I likely won’t. I’ve heard all the arguments against it, that it makes an individual look unintelligent if they use a lot of swear words, and frankly I don’t care; if you’re going to view what I tell you with skepticism because I said the word fuck a lot, that’s a shame. When I drink it gets worse, and I love nothing more than to force people to learn about history when I’ve been drinking, so be prepared for that too.

I think that provides some sufficient info, yeah? Yeah. Okay great.

See you soon.