History

An able administrator and the lynchpin of a royal family, Mathilda of Flanders was the duchess of Normandy and the first Norman queen of England. She was also mother to (at least) nine children. Among these numbered a duke and two kings of England, including her firstborn, Robert Curthose. Her activity as mother is also evident in the lives of her daughters, especially Cecelia, abbess of the Benedictine abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen. Two important sources anchor my analysis of this foundational part of Mathilda's identity; the Mathildine speech in Orderic Vitalis' Historia Ecclesiastica and Fulcoius of Beauvais' Jepthah poem. The first is Mathilda's defense of her treasonous behavior in supporting her son Robert Curthose's efforts at rebellion against his father, William the Conqueror. The second is Fulcoius' poem written for Cecelia on the occasion of her oblation to her mother's monastic house in Caen, France. Cecelia would become abbess of Holy Trinity, a role she was no doubt educated specifically to assume. Mathilda and William promised Cecelia to the monastic life months before the Norman conquest of England launched in September, 1066. These two primary sources illustrate eleventh century mores of royal motherhood and provide tantalizing evidence for the central place of female maternal authority in the medieval Norman court. The careers of Mathilda's children demonstrate further her influence as ruling mother.

Theresa Earenfight's The King's Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon represents the first full-length treatment of an extraordinarily important figure in medieval Iberian politics, María of Castile. Earenfight's work is a political biography with an institutional history at its core. The work relies on rich Iberian archival sources containing thousands of documents pertaining to María of Castile and her role in royal administration. Letters between Alfonso and María and their staff, legal briefs, and myriad written instructions allow Earenfight to reconstruct the workings of the Aragonese royal house on an almost daily basis. The records of the Catalan parliamentary assembly, which often worked against royal actions and prerogatives, allow a more complete picture of María's actions filtered through an unsympathetic source. The wife of Alfonso V of Aragon, queen of Aragon from 1416-57, María governed Catalunya as queen-lieutenant for twenty-six years. Her assumption of rule was critical to the health of the crown, as Alfonso traveled to the Aragonese holdings in Italy both to administer government and to wage war. Earenfight's book includes a thorough examination of the office of lieutenancy in the Kingdom of Aragon. This office constituted not merely an official representation of royal authority but its embodiment. In a document awarding María expanded rights over the financial business of the kingdom, Alfonso refers to his queen not only as his lieutenant, but as de altera a parte nostri corporis "part of his body" (78). The extensive and disjointed holdings of the Crown of Aragon, including Sicily, Naples, Corsica, and Sardinia, necessitated this joint rule. After a brief first chapter, which discusses the sources for María's reign and the theory and practice of queenship, the next four chapters examine María's

Mathilda of Flanders’ coronation and anointing on Pentecost, May 11, 1068 at Westminster was unlike any other seen in England before and included innovative triumphalist elements confected solely for her.  It was also the first time (as far as we know) that the ritual was performed for a queen who was noticeably pregnant. Mathilda was carrying her last child, the future Henry I, as she became a divinely ordained ruler through anointing and coronation.  Not only was Mathilda the originator of Norman queenship on Pentecost in 1068, she embodied the new Norman royal dynasty highlighted by the contours of her own form.
Acknowledging my debt to the work of Johanna Dale, this article considers two important elements of Mathilda’s royal inauguration: the date that she chose for her rite and the personnel who might have had a hand in crafting it. The day of Pentecost was one of the highest holy days of the year, second only to Easter in importance in the liturgical calendar. The year 1068 signaled a permanent end to the honeymoon period—if there indeed was one —between the tattered remains of the English aristocracy and the new Norman administration. In addition, ‘Audi Israel’ offers a close textual analysis of the Scriptural passages used for the Pentecost mass: Acts 2:6-11 and Baruch 3:9, with reference to Genesis 11:1-9. A rich English exegetical tradition concerning Pentecost was already in place when Mathilda stepped onto English soil.

One fundamental assumption underpins my analysis; that Mathilda of Flanders, duchess of Normandy and first Norman queen of England, had a say in her own coronation rite. I do not maintain that Mathilda planned her liturgy alone any more than William the Conqueror did his. The ministers and officials who served them both brought enormous expertise to this ceremony. I will argue, in fact, that the nascent Norman royal court was unusually well-served by a talented group of liturgists. It would have been absurd to ignore the expertise the Norman queen had in such abundance at her command. However, the key beneficiary of Mathilda’s coronation was undeniably the queen herself. Failing any evidence to the contrary, then, I propose that Mathilda made choices about her own royal inauguration.

Great pains were taken to connect the Pentecost message of unity in the Gospels with eleventh-century Anglo-Norman attempts at hegemony. Yet, the overwhelming communication of Mathilda’s rite was not amity with the English but dominance over them. The two-day festal affair of her liturgy invoked the English diaspora and seemed to revel in it. As a result, I argue, the effect of Mathilda’s royal inauguration was not unity but discord.

A central focus of the administration of Mathilda of Flanders, both as duchess of Normandy and queen of England, was her foundation in 1066 of the royal abbey of La Trinité, Caen.  Founded as a twin to William the Conqueror’s abbey of St. Stephens, the female Benedictine house was one element of Caen’s development as the ‘second capital’ of Normandy in the eleventh century. The monastery also offers an exceptional opportunity to examine how, after Mathilda’s death in 1083, the second generation of the Norman royal family interacted with the foundation. The election of Cecelia, Mathilda and William’s daughter, to abbatial authority in 1113 also marked a decisive moment in the administration and identity of the community. These two occurrences, Queen Mathilda’s death and Cecelia’s election, illustrate a very different sort of dynastic succession in a royal family than is typical. Deeply involved and highly directive, Mathilda’s relationship to her monastic community was unusually active, especially her arrangements for its financial security and its future. But in response to the challenges of the Norman world at large and those more regional and specific, Cecelia as the new leader of La Trinité, initiated a series of definitive alterations. First, La Trinité embarked upon an ambitious building program beginning in 1090 that would alter very markedly the face the abbey presented to the wider world. The construction would stretch on for thirty years and shepherded into completion under Cecilia’s direction. Secondly, Cecelia conducted a survey of the abbey’s land and estates in the early years of the twelfth century. A late twelfth or early thirteenth-century copy of the survey, preserved in the cartulary of La Trinité (BN. Lat 5650) reveals the changing shape of the community and its financial interests in the region. Cecelia embraced some of the original arrangements of her mother and foundress and discarded others. Finally, an important collection of relics amassed by Mathilda of Flanders in the latter half of the eleventh century for the benefit of her community at Caen was expanded and its contents codified under her daughter. While adding to the prestige of the collection through acquisition of new relics as they became available, Cecilia and the nuns continued to draw an explicit connection to their patroness in the textual records of the remains. Cecelia’s approach to new challenges and priorities in the first half of the twelfth century reveals how the nuns and their abbess adjusted their expectations and identity in the face of a changing political landscape.

Kīrtimukha or grāsamukha is one of the most indispensable elements of north Indian art. A floating bodiless, jawless lion face with bulging eyes, ferocious teeth and fangs, horns, a full moustache and a tuft of hair rising from space between its eyebrows appears on Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jaina sacred structures alike. The earliest appearance of kīrtimukha as an architectural decorative motif can be dated to the early fifth century CE in north India under the Gupta artistic patronage.

The Hindu diaspora in the United States has been one of the most educated and highest earning immigrant groups. They exert considerable influence in the arenas of culture, economy and recently politics. They are attempting to institutionalize Hinduism and "educate" Americans about the religion through creation of lobby groups and the use of social media. Motivated by these recent developments, the article examines the processes of creation, reimagination, and consumption of images of the South Asian goddess in the public sphere, and how these images are perceived by the Hindu diaspora.

This course attempts the impossible! We will study the history of a continent from well before recorded history to 1800! We will not, of course, be covering "everything," but will be looking at the major themes in African History during these time periods in an attempt to understand the histories of peoples and places on the continent. We will examine geographic regions like Egypt and West Africa, as well as thematic topics such as food production, the development of iron, the spread of languages, Islam in Africa, and start of the slave trade to illuminate the early history of this vast and diverse continent. In this class, we will also explore how history is created, drawing on historical documents as well as insights from other academic disciplines.

Journal of African History 55:3 (Nov 2014), 401-421
The rhetoric of development served as a language for Sotho politicians from 1960–70 to debate the meanings of political participation. The relative paucity of aid in this period gave outsized importance to small projects run in rural villages, and stood in stark contrast to the period from the mid-1970s onwards when aid became an ‘anti-politics machine’ that worked to undermine national sovereignty. Examination of the democratic period in Lesotho from 1966–70 helps explain the process by which newly independent states gave up some of their recently won sovereignty, and how a turn to authoritarianism helped contribute to this process.
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