Felice Lifshitz
Professor (Medieval Europe, Historiography, Medieval Chrisitanity, gender) Columbia University, Ph.D. 1988
DM 386 Tel. (305) 348-3557 email: lifshitz@fiu.edu
Research interests
During the 1980s and 1990s, my research was primarily concerned with saint veneration practices, and their attendant manuscript sources. I published numerous studies on the narrative biographies of Norman saints, which I analyzed for what they revealed about the politicized creation and utilization of historiographical representations (narratives about the remote or recent past). Most noteworthy was my monograph, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics (684 – 1090) (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press, Toronto, 1995), and my methodological/theoretical article, "Beyond Positivism and Genre: Hagiographical Texts as Historical Narrative" Viator 25 (1994) pp. 95 – 113; the latter was the subject of a round-table discussion at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2000, entitled “No More Hagiography?” I also published a number of studies of other aspects of and sources for the history of medieval Normandy, above all the works of Dudo of St. Quentin, whose Gesta Normannorum I translated into English. The Latin text of Dudo’s narrative appears here on this website.
In the latter part of the 1990s, I turned my attention to the liturgical practices of reciting, inscribing, collecting and even bearing saints’ names, independent of the figures’ historical personalities or significance. Such practices were all extremely rare among Christians during the early Middle Ages, when most people preferred to access the realm of sacred power through other routes, such as relics, images and of course stories of saints. Between 1995 and 2004, I was fortunate to be able to spend a total of three years in Germany and Austria (in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Freiburg and Vienna) doing manuscript research on liturgical sources. My research was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the DAAD, and Florida International University. My study of these liturgical phenomena resulted in my second monograph, The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia, 627 – 827 (Notre Dame, IN, 2005), and in a number of other articles on litanies, baptismal rites, and the like. During this period, I also co-edited a collection of methodological essays with Celia Chazelle: Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies: A Reconsideration (2007).
I have recently been particularly concerned with the history of women and gender during the early Middle Ages. I recently published collection of essays, co-edited with Lisa Bitel: Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (2008). The collection will soon appear in paperback. Over the last few years I have also been at work on a book-length study of a series of eighth-century women’s manuscripts from the Main River valley region, tentatively entitled Gendered Transmissions: Women, Manuscripts, and Christian Culture in EarlyCarolingian Francia. During this same period, I have become increasingly concerned about the ways in which medievalists can contribute to discussions over matters of contemporary relevance. I have expressed my belief in our need to engage in public discourse in several venues over the past few years, including in a paper at the 2009 American Historical Association meeting in New York City, entitled “On Being a Philosopher-Historian: Social Engagement after the Ethical Turn.” In keeping with this orientation, I am now engaged in putting together a collection of essays, co-edited with Celia Chazelle, Simon Doubleday, and Amy Remensydner, entitled Why the Middle Ages Matter, to be published by Routledge in 2010.
