Reading Primary Sources

This course is crosslisted between History and Women’s Studies and the students enrolled have a wide variety of backgrounds. If you have no experience reading historical sources, please read over the following page for some tips on how to approach them.

I’ve taken an example from one of the first primary sources we are reading to model how this type of analysis is done from a historical perspective.

Reading Primary Sources

Suggested Topics

There are a huge number of potential topics that you could explore for your final projects. Here are a few broad suggestions:

  • Women and religion: women as nuns and abbesses, women involved in heretical movements, women as mystics, women as writers of religious texts, Jewish women and religious practice, Muslim women and religious practice.
  • Women’s work: women as sex-trade workers, women as artisans, women as midwives or doctors or healers, women market sellers, women and rural work, women as authors, women and administrative positions.
  • Elite women: focus on a particular queen or ruler, noblewomen, urban elite women, noblewomen as daughters and wives
  • Marriage and the family: motherhood, wifehood, widowhood
  • Law: women as heiresses or controlling their own property, women as agents in the courts, women as criminals
  • Gender and slavery: enslaved women in households, enslaved women as sexually exploited
  • Women and sexuality: lesbians, prostitution, marital sex, extramarital sex
  • Transwomen
  • Women and warfare: as victims of war, as warriors, as generals
  • Socio-economic status: poor women, women as migrants, lower status women, middling class women, elite women
  • Women as minorities: Jewish women, Muslim women, women of colour
  • Women’s bodies: medicine, perceptions of women’s bodies, medical writings
  • Singlewomen

Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources refer to historical documents or other materials that were created during the time period we are studying. For this course, you can choose material that was created between 400 and 1500 C.E.

Sources related to medieval women’s history are available in many different places, including edited collections of translated and published material. I’ve included some suggestions of where to find sources below and have divided them between ebooks/hard copy books available through the UNBC library and websites.

EBooks/Hard Copy books

These books feature selections from a variety of different types of historical sources, often organized by theme. Remember that you are looking for INDIVIDUAL historical sources in these books, not at the book as a whole.

The hard copy books are on reserve at the library.

Women’s Lives in medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (ebook) https://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b3486578~S3

Women Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts PR1912.A2 W65

Medieval Writings on Secular Women HQ1143 M43 2011

The Viking Age: A Reader (See Chapter 4: Gender in the Viking Age) https://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b2835164~S3

The Intolerant Middle Ages: A Reader (See Chapters 8 and 9 in particular but there are other documents featuring women elsewhere in this book) https://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b3234732~S3

Medieval Women Writers PN 667 M43 1984

Medieval England: A Reader (Documents about women throughout) https://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b2280123~S3

Women in England, 1275-1525 (Documents related to medieval English women) DA 170 W6555 1995

Letters of the Queens of England, 1100-1547 (Reminder that your source must come from before 1500) DA 170 L48 1997

Online Sources

Internet Women’s History Sourcebook This website provides historical sources for women’s history from different eras and places. Remember that the time limitation for our course is 400-1500. Some of the links are dead. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/women/womensbook.asp

Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Letters This website provides translations of medieval Latin letters to and from women. You can search biographically or browse through the collection. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/

Teaching Medieval Slavery and Captivity This website provides translated primary sources as well as suggestions for secondary sources related to the history of slavery. You can browse the material by theme here https://medievalslavery.org/themes/

Secondary Sources

Our library has been expanding its collections of books about medieval women so, depending on your topic, you may find some materials there.

Using General Search in the Library Catalogue

In order to find relevant articles and books, you’ll need a few tips!

  • Use the “advance search” to limit your search parameters by language, discipline, and publication date (after 1990!)
  • Make sure it is an academic article and not a book review. If you’re not sure, ask a librarian or me!
  • Remember that we are looking for academic articles from the discipline of History or Medieval Studies. So if you find an article on your topic, but it’s published in the American Journal on Medical Research, it’s probably not very relevant. Make sure to ask!

International medieval Bibliography https://wizard.unbc.ca/record=e1000689~S3

This database indexes articles and book chapters on medieval European history.

  • Don’t forget to limit your search by language!
  • To find out if the material you’re interested in is available at UNBC, click the “get it @unbc” link. If it’s not available, remember you can order it through interlibrary loan. For book chapters, click on “request a CHAPTER from this book” rather than ordering the book as the librarian will email you a copy of the chapter.
  • Only choose articles published since 1990!

Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/QuickSearch.aspx

This online database catalogues books and articles about medieval women. You can search here and then check the UNBC catalogue to see if we have the material you’re looking for. If not, you can use interlibrary loan. Please contact me or a librarian for help.