Dr Patricia Skinner

Welcome to my homepage, listing the courses I teach, my research interests and my publications.

Courses Taught

Year 1

HIST1072 Marco Polo and the Medieval World (new course, semester 2)

Year 2

HIST 2013 Gender in Medieval Europe (currently taught by Dr Leonie Hicks)

Year 3

HIST 3063/4 Urban Life in Medieval Italy

MA

Medieval Historical Texts: production and consumption (co-taught)

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Research Interests

My research interests centre on the history of medieval women and gender, and the focus of my work is the Mediterranean region, specifically southern Italy. The region's diverse ethnic make-up led to my current Leverhulme-funded project on 'The Movement of Objects and Peoples in medieval southern Italy', including work on the Jewish community there, and I had a year's Research Fellowship in 2001/2 working on a project entitled 'Did the Jews have a "Middle Ages"?', published as an article in Past and Present. I am an active member of the Centre for Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Selected papers from a memorial conference to its former Director, Timothy Reuter, will appear under my editorship as a published volume.

I co-organised another major international conference in 2004 on Masculinity, Patriarchy and Power, selected papers of which are currently being edited for publication.

I serve on the Editorial Collective of Gender and History (Blackwell), and am medieval editor for The Longman History of European Women (volume 2, Women in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500, by Jennifer Ward, appeared in 2002), and volume 1 is in preparation). In Longman's Women and Men in History series I acted as medieval editor for and/or contributed to the following:

  • Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. H. Hadley (1999)
  • Barbara Hill, Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204 (1999)
  • Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past 700-1300, ed. E. van Houts (2000)
  • Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Cavallo and L. Warner (1999)

I also co-edit the Manchester University Press series Gender in History. The first medieval title, which came out in 2003, is Susan Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the 12th-Century Anglo-Norman Realm.

I offer supervision to PhD students in the broad areas of medieval gender studies, women's history and Mediterranean history. I am currently supervising Tehmina Goskar's work on the movement of material objects within medieval southern Italy, and will soon be supervising a comparative project on the history of English and Sicilian Jewish communities.

Selected Publications

Books, authored

  • Family Power in Southern Italy: the Duchy of Gaeta and its Neighbours, 850-1139 (Cambridge University Press, 1995, paperback 2003)
  • Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy (Brill, 1997)
  • Women in Medieval Italian Society, 500-1200 (Longman, 2001, Italian edition, Rome, Viella, 2005). See a review of this book.

Books, edited

  • The Jews in Medieval Britain (Boydell, 2003) See a review of this book

Conference Contributions - Refereed

  • A cure for a sinner: sickness and healthcare in medieval southern Italy, in The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. J. Hill and M. Swann (Leeds, 1998)

Conference Contributions - Other

  • Women, literacy and invisibility in southern Italy, in Women, the Book and the Worldly, ed. L. Smith and J. Taylor (Woodbridge, Boydell, 1995), 1-11.
  • Gender and poverty in the medieval community, in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. D. Watt (Cardiff, UWP, 1997), 203-221.
  • When was southern Italy 'feudal'?, in Settimane di Studio sull'Alto Medioevo, 47: Il Feudalesimo nell'alto medioevo (Spoleto, 2000).

Edited Works - contributions

  • The widow's options in medieval southern Italy, in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Cavallo and L. Warner (London, Longman, 1999)
  • Memory and gender in medieval Italy, in Men, Women and the Past in Medieval Europe, ed. E. M. C. van Houts (London, Longman, 2000)
  • Roger I, in Encyclopaedia of Medieval Italy, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz (Garland, 2004)
  • The Tyrrhenian coastal cities under the Normans, in The Society of Norman Italy, ed. G. A. Loud (Brill, 2002)
  • Material life, in Oxford Shorter History of Medieval Italy, 1100-1300, ed. D. Abulafia (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • Donne nel commercio amalfitano, 1000-1200, in 'Donne nel commercio amalfitano (secoli X-XII)', in Donna tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna in Italia: ricerche, ed. G. Casagrande (Perugia, Morlacchi, 2004)
  • 'Daughters of Sichelgaita: the women of Salerno in the 12th century', in Salerno nel XII Secolo, ed. P. Delogu and P. Peduto (Salerno, Centro Studi Salernitani 'Raffaele Guariglia', 2004).

Editorships - Newsletters

  • Co-founder and co-editor of Wessex Medieval Centre Newsletter

Journal papers - academic journals

  • Noble families in the duchy of Gaeta in the 10th century, Papers of the British School at Rome, 60 (1992)
  • Women, wills and wealth in medieval southern Italy, Early Medieval Europe, 2 (1993)
  • Urban communities in Naples, 900-1050, Papers of the British School at Rome, 62 (1994)
  • Politics and piracy: the duchy of Gaeta in the 12th century, Journal of Medieval History, 21 (1995)
  • Disputes and disparity: women at court in medieval southern Italy, Reading Medieval Studies, 22 (1996)
  • 'The light of my eyes': medieval motherhood in the Mediterranean, Women's History Review, 6 (1997)
  • Room for tension: urban life in Apulia in the 11th and 12th centuries, Papers of the British School at Rome, 66 (1998)
  • 'And her name was...?' Gender and naming in medieval southern Italy, Medieval Prosopography 20 (1999)
  • 'Halt! Be men!' Sikelgaita of Salerno, gender and the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Gender and History, 12 (2000)
  • 'Gender, memory and family identity: reading a southern Italian Jewish family chronicle', Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2004)

Journal papers - popular journals

  • Medieval women (review article), The Historian: the magazine of the Historical Association, 36 (1992)
  • The possessions of Lombard women in Italy, Medieval Life, 2 (1995)

Review articles in academic publications

  • Central Middle Ages, 900-1200: Europe: review of publications of 1996, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 82 (1998)
  • Central Middle Ages, 900-1200: Europe: review of publications of 1997, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 83 (1999)
  • Central Middle Ages, 900-1200: Europe: review of publications of 1998, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 84 (2000)

Reviews of Single Academic Books omitted from this list

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This page is maintained by Trish Skinner and was last updated 1 October 2005.