Medieval Fabrications

The varied cultural functions of dress, textiles, and clothwork are used in this collection of essays to examine long-standing assumptions about the Middle Ages. At one end of the spectrum, questions of dress call up feminist theoretical investigations into the body and subjectivity, while broadening those inquiries to include theories of masculinity and queer identity as well. At the other extreme, the production and distribution of textiles carries us into the domain of economic history and the study of material commodities, trade and cultural patterns of exchange within western Europe and between east and west. Contributors to this volume represent a broad array of disciplines currently involved in rethinking medieval culture in terms of the material world.

SAHAR AMER Associate Professor of Asian Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
ATHLEEN ASHLEY Professor of English, University of Southern Maine, USA
MADELINE CAVINESS Professor of Art History, Tufts University
ANDREA DENNY-BROWN Graduate student, English, Columbia University, New York, USA
DYAN ELLIOTT Professor of History, University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA
SARAH-GRACE HELLER Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, Ohio State University, USA
RUTH KARRAS Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
SARAH KAY Senior Lecturer, French, Cambridge University, UK
SHARON KINOSHITA Associate Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
ROBERTA L. KRUEGER Professor of Romance Languages, Hamilton College, USA
PAMELA SHEINGORN Professor of Art, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and Professor of Medieval Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
JANET SNYDER Assistant Professor of Art History, West Virginia University, USA
CLAIRE SPONSLER Associate Professor of English, University of Iowa, USA