Minnesota professor receives funding to research medieval religious women in Germany

In the past year, Jennifer Deane, associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota Morris, has received two grants: the University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid-of-Research and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, which fund her research on the “beguines” or lay religious women of medieval Germany. The grants have enabled her to make several trips to archives and libraries in Germany, and to share ideas and research findings with European colleagues.

For years, Deane has been passionate about studying the lay religious women of medieval Europe often known as “beguines”, whose hundreds of independent communities were mainly centered in the Low Countries, the Rhine region, France, and German-speaking lands. Beguines were not nuns, but single laywomen who gathered in pious households and observed a chaste and humble lifestyle in some ways similar to that within a monastery. However, they were also deeply embedded in local communities, had strong connections to secular and religious authorities, and provided charitable service such as prayer and teaching children. Despite their modest and innocuous existence, beguines’ semi-religious status drew inquisitorial attention in the fourteenth century, distorting their image to this day—for those who have even heard of them.

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Globalization of the Middle Ages project receives funding

Susan Noakes, University of Minnesota professor in the department of French and Italian, will have $70,000 over the next two years to initiate a research project on “Globalization of the Middle Ages.”

The $70,000 grant which will help initiate this project comes from the University’s Imagine Fund. The fund began as the McKnight Arts in Humanities Endowment in 1991 and now gives about $1.3 million to arts, design and humanities scholars each year.

Funds for arts and humanities are often the first to be cut during tough economic times, Jon Binks, who works in the university's academic affairs office, said. The Imagine Fund awards scholars pursuing innovative ideas related to global problem-solving, Binks said.

Noakes’ long-range initiative includes collaborating with international scholars to “globalize approaches to the Middle Ages,” Noakes said.

“The Middle Ages have traditionally been seen as occurring only in Europe,” Noakes said.

However, other civilizations existed at that time. Noakes, alongside other international scholars across academic disciplines, formed the Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages . The scholars aspire to make the events of those civilizations more accessible, she said.

“It’s hard in humanities to get this sort of start-up money,” Noakes said, adding she is “overwhelmed with gratitude” and hopes this will lead to more grants for the project.

Beginning in the Twin Cities area, Noakes also plans to put together a public presentation of medieval works to stimulate conversation and learning, she said.

During the Middle Ages, Noakes explained, Christians, Muslims and Jews were in conflict with each other and each group recorded the disputes. Noakes said she wants to bring the works together for the first time, translate them into English and create a performance.

Ultimately, Noakes said the scholarly community wants to make new research on the Middle Ages available via the Internet. The Web site would include interactive maps and in-depth details of different civilizations at that time, she said.

“The Imagine Fund is happy to seed these kinds of ideas,” Binks said.

Noakes said the grant will be used to hire workers and provide airfare for international scholars to come to the University. The funds provide the first steps the community needs to establish itself. Members will apply for more grants over the next few years.