Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Logo of Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality: the title in a sans-serif font, wrapped around a mosaic of the eye of Empress Theodora

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality (MFF, e-ISSN 2151-6073) is an online, peer-reviewed journal of interdisciplinary scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality in medieval studies. We invite studies of literature, history, religion, art and architecture, and medievalism, including ones that employ theoretical models ranging from (but not limited to) queer theory and trans studies, critical race theory, decolonial and postcolonial approaches, disability studies, ecocriticism, materiality, affect theory, and history of emotion. Studies of specific authors or events are welcome, but should be framed for an audience of feminist medievalists broadly construed as well as for specialists in the case study.

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Current issue: Volume 60, number 1 (2025)

Cover of MFF 59.2; the Medieval Feminist Forum logo, which is a black and white image of a fresco with the name of the journal beside it, on a white background.

Articles

The Fortitude of Medieval Women, by Virginia Blanton

The Fortitude of Friendship: Countess Ermengarde of Brittany and Bishop Marbode of Rennes, by Amy Livingstone

Being English(?) In Ireland: Women's Seals and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland, by Brittany Rancour

Women as Disputants in Thirteenth-Century English Forest Law, by Paula A. Hayward

Interior Design and Queenly Display in the Household of Isabella of France, by Anne Stanton 

Arranging for Space: Religious Performance, Piety, and the Tomb of Joan de Mohun, by Melissa M. Morris

Elizabeth Brice and Elizabeth Rede: Two Female Goldsmiths, by Katherine French

Mothers at Home, Writing Letters: Alessandra Strozzi and Margaret Paston, by Joel Rosenthal

Book Reviews

Uncertain Refuge: Sanctuary in the Literature of Medieval England, by Elizabeth Allen, review by Wendy Matlock 

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society, by Eleanor Janega, review by Emily C. Francomano

Women's Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages: Speaking Internationally, edited by Katheryn Loveridge, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Sue Niebryzdowski, and Vicki Kay Price, review by Caitlin Branum Thrash

Pierre de Vaux and Sister Perrine de Baume, Two Lives of Saint Colette with a Selection of Letters by, to, and about Colette, edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinki, review by Marisa Michaud

Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300–1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith, by Lynneth Miller Renberg, review by Clint E. Morrison Jr. 

Courtly and Queer: Deconstruction, Desire, and Medieval French Literature, by Charlie Samuelson, review by Anna Klosowska

Gender and the 'Natural' Environment in the Middle Ages, edited by Theresa L. Tyers and Patricia Skinner, review by Danielle Allor

Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, through the Women Written Out of It, by Janina Ramirez, review by Jo Koster

English Women's Spiritual Utopias, 1400–1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood, by Alexandra Verini, review by Kirsty Bolton

Feminist Medievalisms: Embodiment and Vulnerability in Literature and Film, by Usha Vishnuvajjala, review by Lucy Barnhouse

General editor

Jennifer C. Edwards, History, Manhattan College

Associate editors

Basil Arnould Price, CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, UCLA
E. Ann Matter, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Lynn Shutters, English, Colorado State University
Melissa Ridley Elmes, English, Lindenwood University

Subsidia editor

Emily Francomano, Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University

Book review editor

Suzanne Edwards, English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Lehigh University

History

MFF was born in 1984, the result of a serendipitous encounter at Kalamazoo airport between three feminist medievalists in the aftermath of the annually convened International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. Bearing the title "Medieval Feminist Newsletter" (MFN), its founders and foremothers, E. Jane Burns, Roberta (Bonnie) Krueger, Elizabeth Robertson, and, a little later, Thelma Fenster, established it primarily as a forum for facilitating communication and intellectual exchange between feminist medievalists in the academy who had been feeling disconnected from one another. Its first issue, distributed primarily by hand and by mail, appeared in May 1986. MFN included short research papers and papers from Kalamazoo sessions focusing on gender, discussions surrounding the teaching of medieval studies, summaries of current research into medieval gender and sexuality, and issues surrounding feminist publications. As such, MFN began as a precursor to the now fully international Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS), which was launched in its wake in 1992 to provide a more formal framework for communication and mutual support, and as a primary forum for research into medieval sexuality and gender across the world.

In 1999, MFN morphed into Medieval Feminist Forum to better reflect its newly established status as a fully peer-reviewed academic journal, responding further in 2014 to additional important epistemological shifts by adding the qualifier A Journal of Gender and Sexuality to its primary title. Under that aegis, it continues to offer a forum promoting  scholarship and interdisciplinary exchange, especially in the context of medieval gender and sexuality studies across the globe. MFF went fully online in 2009 and, in its evolved format, continues the ethos of the original "Newsletter" in its committed support of a diverse and fully inclusive medieval studies.

Aims and scope

As the journal of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS), Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality (MFF) publishes articles and book reviews promoting interdisciplinary scholarship on medieval women, gender, and sexuality. We invite submissions from scholars at any stage in their careers, but suggest that graduate and advanced undergraduate students review our recommendations for student writers. Manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review. Submissions that have a focused argument supported by primary-source evidence, contextualized in current scholarly literature, and written in a clear style that engages an audience versed in feminist theory are most successful in the review process. MFF publishes articles of original research as well as state-of-the-field historiographies or literature reviews; we will consider work on the medieval period as well as on medievalism. Scholars interested in reviewing books for MFF should contact the Book Review Editor.

MFF also welcomes proposals for special issues, which will appear in the order the finalized volume is submitted, at most one special issue a year of the two we publish annually. The editing of a special issue of MFF provides the guest editor(s) with an opportunity to bring a group of scholars together and to stimulate them to do their best possible work. MFF encourages authors to reflect widely on their topic; part of the guest editor’s role is to transmit this intellectual spirit to the contributors. The contributors should understand that a narrowly specialized article is not appropriate for MFF, even if the article relates to the special issue’s theme. The best special issues are those in which every article engages with large and serious issues, framed in a way that medievalists from different specialties are able to engage the theme discussed.

A special issue typically consists of an introduction written by the guest editor(s), an article written by (one of) the guest editor(s), and five or six other articles by contributors invited by the guest editor. The contributor list may be the result of an open call or a pre-curated set of contributions. Guidelines for proposing a special issue and for guest editor responsibilities will also be available on the journal's ScholarWorks page.

Please see further policies on submissions and submit your entire and completed work at the journal's ScholarWorks page.

Medieval Feminist Forum is published annually in a digital format, and is only available as an add-on to membership in the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Membership dues, journal subscriptions and orders of individual issues, which can also be printed on demand, are handled by our distributor, ISD. Subscription pricing and membership dues are as follows:

  • Student/retiree/independent scholar memberships in SMFS only are $15.
  • Student/retiree/independent scholar memberships in SMFS and subscriptions to MFF are $30.
  • Individual memberships in SMFS only are $30.
  • Individual memberships in SMFS and subscriptions to MFF are $60.
  • Institution or library subscriptions to MFF are $95.
  • Our subscription order form can also be used to contact ISD for print-on-demand orders.