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WORK TITLE: FEMINA
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WEBSITE: https://www.janinaramirez.co.uk
CITY: Oxfordshire, England
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
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PERSONAL
Born Janina Sara Maria Maleczek, July 7, 1980, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, B.A. (English literature); University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, M.A. (art, literature, and culture of Anglo-Saxon England) and Ph.D. (artistic and literary symbolism of birds).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Cultural historian, broadcaster, and author. University of York, lecturer; University of Winchester, lecturer; University of Warwick, lecturer; University of Oxford, lecturer and course director, 2021, Manchester College, Research Fellow in History of Art at Harris. President of Gloucester History Festival. Television presenter for various programs on BBC Four, 2010–.
AWARDS:University of York, Department of History of Art, Honorary Visiting Fellow.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Based in England, Janina Ramirez is a cultural historian, broadcaster, author, and lecturer at the University of Oxford who writes historical books on medieval history. She has a passion for communicating ideas about the past and specializes in interpreting symbols and examining works of art within their historical context. On her homepage she says: “I want to share ideas, information, and inspiration with every student.”
In her first book, The Private Lives of the Saints: Power, Passion and Politics in Anglo-Saxon, Ramirez examines this era of saints, the context in which they lived, and their influence on the Anglo-Saxon culture. She begins by defining a saint in the early medieval period as a person, usually of high status, that everyone in the community deemed to be a saint. Then she covers a variety of saints in chronological order, starting with Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr in the 3rd century, then including Brigid, Patrick, Cuthbert, Hilda, and Bede, and ending with Alfred the Great who died in 899 AD. She explore their lives, good works, and the diversity of Anglo-Saxon people, religion, and culture. L. A. Smith reviewed the book online, commenting: “Dr. Ramirez has brought these people and the era in which they lived into bright relief. I really appreciate her careful and thorough scholarship.”
Ramirez wrote her first children’s book, Riddle of the Runes: A Viking Mystery, illustrated by David Wyatt that provides historical adventure and a mystery story. In Viking times, after a monk tells the strange story of a secret casket and a kidnapping, 13-year-old shield maiden Alva begins to investigate, using skills of observation and deduction she learned from her investigator uncle. The book teaches children how to read runes. School Librarian reviewer Kathryn Tyson observed: “there is much to be gleaned about Viking lore and culture in the background detail.” Another Viking adventure, Way of the Waves, finds Alva and her pet wolf as stowaways on a longship sailing the seas, exploring new lands, and hopefully finding her lost father. “Ramirez does a fantastic job of weaving together the story and historical fact, so it also acts as an educational tool,” said a reviewer online at Roachie’s Reviews.
Ramirez gathers tales of 50 powerful women who played a central role in the religions and cultures of the world, past and present in British Museum: Goddess: 50 Goddesses, Spirits, Saints and Other Female Figures Who Have Shaped Belief. Ramirez presents Abrahamic Eve and Mary, Greek goddess Athena, Inuit mother of the sea Sedna, Japanese goddess of death Izanami, Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, plus women from Mexico, Yoruba, Aztec, and Jewish lore. A description of the figure, her story, and how she has shaped belief are covered. “For any girl who thinks she can’t be as strong as the boys, or as smart, loved, or powerful, this wonderful book is a must,” declared Vanessa Elle online at Glam Adelaide.
Finally giving medieval women credit, Ramirez’s Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It highlights many notable women from history. She includes women like AEthelflaed who ruled the kingdom of Mercia, 12th century nun Hildegard of Bingen who wrote the Riesencodex, 14th century “king” of Poland and Catholic saint Jadwiga, suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, and the recent discovery of a Viking body buried in full battle accoutrements in Sweden found to be that of a woman. “Ramirez also highlights new breakthroughs in archaeology and anthropological study that have allowed researchers to uncover these hidden stories,” reported a Kirkus Reviews writer. A Publishers Weekly contributor praised this feminist history, saying: “Throughout, Ramirez’s adept scene-setting segues gracefully into deeper considerations of these women’s lives and work.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2023, review of Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It.
Publishers Weekly, December 5, 2022, review of Femina, p. 116.
School Librarian, Winter 2018, Kathryn Tyson, review of Riddle of the Runes, p. 238.
Times Literary Supplement, December 16, 2016, Hilary Pearson, review of Julian of Norwich.
ONLINE
Glam Adelaide, https://glamadelaide.com.au/ (March 8, 2022), Vanessa Elle, review of Goddess: 50 Goddesses, Spirits, Saints and Other Female Figures Who Have Shaped Belief.
Janina Ramirez website, https://www.janinaramirez.co.uk/ (January 1, 2023), author profile.
L.A. Smith, https://lasmithwriter.com/ (January 1, 2023), review of The Private Lives of the Saints.
Roachie’s Reviews, https://roachiesreviews.com/ (July 7, 2019), review of Way of the Waves.
I’m a cultural historian, broadcaster and author based at the University of Oxford with a passion for communicating ideas about the past. As a lecturer and course director, I want to share ideas, information and inspiration with every student. And also open up the subject to anyone and everyone who cares to listen, through the wide reach of television, radio, publications and new media.
My research began with a degree in English literature at Oxford, followed by an MA and PhD at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York on the art, literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England. But my interests have constantly branched outwards in all directions as I have taught more broadly on everything from classical architecture to the work of Tracey Emin.
Broadcasting has allowed me to see narrative threads stretching across time and disciplines, and to find shared human concerns, themes, problems and innovations throughout time.
I’ve lived, researched, broadcasted and published through a period of great change – the Digital Revolution – where traditional modes of communication are being replaced by new ways of interacting with audiences worldwide. I’m dedicated to embracing ideas, opportunities and advances, moving with the fast flow of modern thought.
There’s one word that has appeared in every school and university report I’ve ever had: ‘enthusiastic’. I want to share this enthusiasm.
Dr Janina Ramirez is President of Gloucester History Festival. This year’s Gloucester History Festival will run from 3-18 September with more than 100 events taking place in more than 50 venues. Janina will be speaking at Sunday 11th September in Blackfriars Priory.
HONORARY FELLOW
Dr Janina Ramirez is an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Department of History of Art at the University of York. Janina has been a close friend of the Department since completing her postgraduate studies at York and now combines her research with numerous media projects.
From 'piecemealing' medievalist to TV darling: how Janina Ramirez is championing slow media about culture
The shows Raiders of the Lost Past and Handmade in Bolton on the BBC and the scholar's popular podcast reflect a thirst for in-depth knowledge
Ben Luke
6 November 2019
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Janina Ramirez and Shaun Greenhalgh in BBC Four’s Handmade in Bolton
Matt Conway, ZcZ Films
You might have been forgiven for thinking that this autumn on BBC Four was Janina Ramirez season. First, in September, she presented Raiders of the Lost Past, a brilliant series about three archaeological finds made in 1939: the Sutton Hoo burial, the palaeolithic Lion Man found in Nazi Germany, the Olmec civilisation of Mexico. Then, three weeks after the last episode of that series, she was back on screen as a co-star in another new programme: Handmade in Bolton, directed by the critic and broadcaster Waldemar Januszczak, in which she challenged Shaun Greenhalgh, a reformed convicted forger, to recreate artefacts of the past—from a Visigothic cloissoné brooch, to a Palissy rusticware plate and an Islamic rock crystal vase.
“I never dreamt that [television] would be my pathway,” says Ramirez. She was discovered by the BBC in 2009 through “complete luck and happenstance”, after finishing her PhD in Anglo Saxon art, literature and culture at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York (she now runs the History of Art course at the department for continuing education at the University of Oxford). She was a “piecemealing” medievalist, “working for peanuts” when a BBC researcher called her about a potential programme about the Anglo Saxons—she was the second Anglo Saxon art expert to come up on Google: “The first person was actually my PhD supervisor, and she was in Australia, so she couldn’t take the call.” Ramirez says she “burned [the researcher’s] ear off for hours on the phone telling him everything I love about Anglo Saxon art”. Months later, another call: “They wanted to put me in front of the camera.”
She had only had a brief cameo on screen before and adds that she “didn’t have a clue what to do”, though she seems immediately accomplished as a presenter when you watch 2010’s Treasures of the Anglo Saxons today. But Ramirez was among a number of academics and curators who began to present much of BBC Four’s and BBC Two’s output in that same era, including the classicist Mary Beard and the historian Lucy Worsley. It was a bold decision: being an expert in your field doesn’t guarantee that you can be an effective communicator on television, so “putting the two together was a punt”, Ramirez says. “They’re giving people the platform to be passionate about the stuff they know. Not to just be a talking head that’s handed a script, but to be truly invested in the programmes they’re making.”
And she has never been more invested, she suggests, than in those two most recent shows. “What you get in Raiders is absolutely pure me—there’s no filter between me talking off-camera and me talking on-camera. I could tell the story I wanted to tell: the story of discovery, the story of excitement.”
[Viewers] want to be taken on a journey that’s slow
Meanwhile, Handmade in Bolton “has been a complete revelation”, she says. “It’s been possibly the most exciting thing I’ve worked on.” Greenhalgh is a quiet on-screen presence: he does most of his talking through making, so Ramirez gives the programme an ebullient energy. She appreciates the way Greenhalgh is “teaching me about materials and techniques in the artefacts I’ve loved that go back thousands of years”, she explains, adding that “to understand the skill and the craftsmanship, that’s always been one step removed from my knowledge as an academic”. Greenhalgh “is filling in those gaps”, she says.
She calls Handmade in Bolton “slow TV”, in the best sense, and feels the same about podcasts. Art Detective features Ramirez in discussion with a guest, mostly about one work per episode. “There are thousands of people out there wanting to develop their knowledge in a way that’s properly informed,” she says. “They want to go to a source they know is reliable, and they want to be taken on a journey that’s slow: it could be 40 minutes, it could be an hour, sometimes my podcasts run over and I don’t care. I’m not watching the clock—we’re just two people talking and enthusing about an artwork.”
The idea was partly inspired by her specialism. “Medievalists don’t have a glut of things to look at. So often, you’ll get one image that you work on for a year. And you just pull it apart bit by bit, so you become quite forensic about how you approach an artwork.” The podcasts feature guests you might expect—Januszczak, well-known art historians like Martin Kemp—as well as less obvious art lovers like Philip Selway, the drummer from the band Radiohead. “I do them because I learn in the process,” Ramirez says. “I make friends in the process, meet new people and share exciting conversations.”
• Handmade in Bolton and Ramirez’s The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich are on BBC iPlayer until 12 November and 8 November. Her podcast Janina Ramirez: Art Detective is available on various podcast apps. Her second children’s book Way of the Waves (Oxford University Press), and a Ladybird guide to Beowulf are available now.
Janina Ramirez
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Janina Sara Ramirez
FRHistS
Born Janina Sara Maria Maleczek
7 July 1980 (age 42)
Dubai,[1] United Arab Emirates
Alma mater St Anne's College, Oxford
University of York
Occupations
Lecturer
Art historian
Television presenter
Researcher
Children 2
Website www.janinaramirez.co.uk Edit this at Wikidata
Janina Sara Maria Ramirez FRHistS (pronounced [ja'nina]; née Maleczek; born 7 July 1980), sometimes credited as Nina Ramirez, is a British art historian, cultural historian, and TV presenter. She specialises in interpreting symbols and examining works of art within their historical context.
Contents
1 Education and academic career
2 Personal life
3 Television career
4 Publications
5 References
6 External links
Education and academic career
Ramirez went to school in Slough, Berkshire. She gained a degree in English literature, specialising in Old and Middle English, from St Anne's College, Oxford, before completing her postgraduate studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. She completed a PhD on the artistic and literary symbolism of birds, which led to a lectureship in York's Art History Department, followed by lecturing posts at the University of Winchester, University of Warwick, and University of Oxford.[2]
Until 2021, Ramirez was the course director on the Certificate in History of Art at Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education.[3] In 2021, Ramirez became Research Fellow in History of Art at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford.[4]
Personal life
Her grandfather was Polish.[5] Ramirez and her Spanish husband have two children.[2] At 14, she played bass in a band with Krissi Murison as lead singer.[6] Ramirez was in a punk band while at Oxford but chose finishing her degree over touring with the band.[6]
Television career
Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons, BBC Four, August 2010[7]
The Viking Sagas, BBC Four, May 2011[8][9]
Britain's Most Fragile Treasure, BBC Four, October 2011[10]
Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings, 3-part series, BBC Four, January 2012[11][12]
Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years' War, 3-part series, BBC Four, February 2013[13]
Architects of the Divine: The First Gothic Age, BBC Four, October 2014[14]
Saints and Sinners: Britain's Millennium of Monasteries, 3-part series, BBC Four, February 2015[15]
The Quizeum, A museum-based quiz panel show, BBC Four, April 2015 [16]
The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich, BBC Four, July 2016
An Art Lover's Guide, BBC Four, May 2017[17]
In Search of Arcadia, BBC Four, August 2017[18]
England's Reformation: Three Books that Changed a Nation, BBC Four, October 2017
Art on BBC: The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, BBC Four, May 2018[19]
Raiders of the Lost Past with Janina Ramirez BBC Four, September 2019 - 1 The Sutton Hoo Hoard (broadcast 4 September 2019)
Handmade in Bolton – presenter, featuring Shaun Greenhalgh and narrated by Waldemar Januszczak, BBC Four, October 2019[20]
Lost Worlds and Hidden Treasures, 3-part series, Apple TV, May 2021[21]
Publications
—— (2015). The Private Lives of the Saints: Power, Passion and Politics in Anglo-Saxon England. London: WH Allen. ISBN 978-0-7535-5560-6.
—— (2016). Julian of Norwich: A Very Brief History. London: SPCK. ISBN 978-0-281-07737-3.
—— (2018). Riddle of the Runes (A Viking Mystery). Oxford: OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-276633-5.
—— (2019). Way of the Waves (A Viking Mystery). Oxford: OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-276635-9.
—— (2019). Beowulf. illus. Martyn Pick. London: Ladybird Books. ISBN 978-0-7181-8973-0.
—— (2022). Goddess: 50 Goddesses, Spirits, Saints and Other Female Figures Who Have Shaped Belief. London: Nosy Crow. ISBN 978-1-78800-995-9.
—— (2022). Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It. London: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-7535-5825-6.
Exploring myth and legend with Janina Ramirez
Historian Janina Ramirez tells Diana Bentley about her latest work delving into stories of celebrated archaeological discoveries and the people behind them, and of the medieval women all-too-often overlooked by history.
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MINERVA MAGAZINE
AUGUST 13, 2022
Janina Ramirez is a cultural historian, author, and broadcaster. With a degree in Old and Medieval English from Oxford and a doctorate from the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of York, her starting point and first love has always been the Middle Ages, yet her work has spanned an impressive scope of topics. Teaching posts at the universities of Winchester, Warwick, and Oxford have helped hone her sharp sense of narrative and a love of communicating her love of history to others, demonstrated through her television documentaries and books for different audiences.
The past provides a rich and varied terrain for Janina Ramirez to explore. Nina – as she is known – says her approach is to embrace many aspects of the lives and traditions of her subjects. She is familiar to television viewers with her most recent series for the BBC, Raiders of the Lost Past, which encompasses subjects from the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete to the settlement at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. Another series being planned will examine some more of the great achievements of archaeology and the people behind them. Nina’s broad interests are again being demonstrated with her two new books, one on goddesses and the other on some remarkable medieval women, which introduce us to a variety of female figures from an array of different cultures.
How do you select the areas of history you’d like to study? Has your work on these various eras enhanced your perspective on history?
My specialism is Early Medieval, but I believe that you cannot understand the period you’re focusing on if you don’t have the context of what comes before and after. As a result, I’ve always ranged pretty widely, taking in broader chronological and geographical evidence. I’m also cross-disciplinary, so I don’t work exclusively within one field, but draw in evidence from the sciences and humanities, alongside art, literature, music, archaeology, theology, and history.
As I’ve started to work on more unfamiliar topics, like world religion and ancient civilisations, I’ve found points of connectivity back to my first love of medieval history, but also fascinating points of divergence. Going into deep history has been the most revelatory experience, as I’ve discovered that many essential aspects of being human bind us together across tens of thousands of years.
above One of the griffins in the reconstructed ‘throne room’ at the Minoan palace complex of Knossos, Crete.
One of the griffins in the reconstructed ‘throne room’ at the Minoan palace complex of Knossos, Crete. Image: Dreamstime.
Your work displays a deep interest in the religious. What do you find most compelling about this aspect of the human experience?
Yes, this is a point of disagreement with my more scientifically minded friends, who feel that the realm of ritual and religion can be a distraction from fact-based approaches to studying the past. But I’ve always found the belief structures and ritualised behaviours of groups and societies a gateway to understanding people from a specific time and place. Mythology, tradition, religion – these areas can act as a ‘world in miniature’ for understanding broader social concerns, like attitudes towards war, death, survival, the landscape, family, and morality.
It’s in collective ritualised or traditional acts that history and archaeology record group behaviour. Studying religion and belief also allows us to tap into the ways that individuals expressed difference and divergence. I also think that we ignore religion at our peril. The majority of people across the globe still hold to religious belief systems, and to impose relatively recent notions of secularisation on other parts of the world ignores something that is still of fundamental importance to so many.
The second series of Raiders of the Lost Past included an episode on the palace of Knossos in Crete. What were the most distinctive features of Minoan culture unearthed there by Sir Arthur Evans? Has our understanding advanced much since his time?
I’ve been so lucky to discover areas of archaeology in my television work that were largely unfamiliar to me through my research. The Minoans are the perfect example. I’d always wanted to follow the myth of the Minotaur and explore more about King Minos’ palace at Knossos, but my focus on medieval history meant I had to abandon that particular childhood dream. Yet as we’ve developed Raiders of the Lost Past across two series, the idea was that I would be discovering facts and approaches along with the viewers. And this has led to so many other avenues of investigation in my own work.
The Minoans were a game-changer for me. Not only did the beauty, freedom, and modernity of their art strike a chord, but the remnants of their society that we can construct from what they’ve left behind paint a picture of a singularly advanced and unique civilisation. The role of women was particularly surprising since Minoan Crete is one of the few places where you find that the images of women in positions of power and authority greatly outnumber those of men.
The north entrance of the palace of Knossos, restored by archaeologist Arthur Evans. Image: Dreamstime.
The series has three aims: to introduce viewers to an ancient civilisation (Olmecs, Vikings, Minoans), to record major archaeological discoveries in the past (like those of Arthur Evans), and show how the field has progressed since. Minoan archaeology is developing in fascinating new directions, particularly in terms of trying to find the ‘everyman/woman’ of the past, rather than simply the rich and privileged few. New discoveries are being recorded daily, largely thanks to technological advances such as DNA analysis, ground-penetrating radar, and non-invasive excavation. There has never been a more exciting time to study the past!
The efficacy of some of Evans’ work at Knossos and his interpretation of some aspects of life there is now debated. What is your attitude towards it?
With every archaeological dig I investigate, I’m struck by the same thoughts: how lucky we are that these individuals did this work and made these discoveries so that we’ve been able to build on them. Archaeology can also be very subjective. No matter how scientific and analytical the tools we apply to an excavation, there’ll always come a point when individual imagination puts the finds into a version of the past constructed in the mind of the archaeologist.
This was particularly clear with the work done by Arthur Evans, who was searching for a Minoan civilisation that was more 1920s than the Late Bronze Age. But it still happens today. My job as a cultural historian is to use all the evidence at my disposal – whether it’s a poem, a drawing, a cauldron of soup, or a religious tract – to think my way as accurately and carefully as possible back to the period I’m investigating. And just like trying to make definitive statements on the present, there is never one single viewpoint.
How did the work at Çatalhöyük revolutionise our understanding of European history? What are some of the most surprising aspects of what was uncovered there?
The discovery of Çatalhöyük transformed our understanding of where and when the practice of humans living together in cities began. It pushed our notions of the fertile crescent out into the plains of Turkey and stretched the chronology back to more than 7,000 years BC.
I was blown away by the order of the place. The houses were kept meticulously clean, with communal rubbish pits for disposing of waste, and regular paint jobs inside the rooms to keep them looking immaculate. The relationship with the dead was strangely moving, as they buried their ancestors beneath the floor so they could live, eat, and sleep near them. I was also surprised by the apparently egalitarian nature of their society. No state buildings or religious complexes have been discovered. The houses were all of similar size, and analysis of the many bones reveals that everyone ate roughly the same and performed the same tasks, regardless of sex or social background.
The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, in Turkey, where excavations have shed light on the earliest practices and social organisation of people living together in cities. Image: Dreamstime.
The next series of Raiders of the Lost Past will include a programme on Howard Carter. How would you describe his character and his approach? What have you enjoyed learning about them?
In working on Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun, I’ve discovered many aspects of this famous man that are little known. For a start, he was not highly educated and did not set out to become one of the world’s most famous archaeologists. He was artistically talented, and it was his drawing skills that took him to Egypt in the first place. He worked for decades making a name for himself and learned alongside some of the greatest archaeologists of the last century, but his experience was gained on the ground, rather than in university lecture halls or from volumes of books. Carter was often lonely, made enemies easily and had a fiery temper. But he was also thoughtful of the Egyptian people he worked alongside and had an intuitive approach to uncovering ancient finds. As with each of the ‘super-star’ archaeologists I’ve investigated, Howard Carter’s story is as fascinating as the civilisation he unearthed.
What part has myth and legend played in spurring archaeological discoveries?
That’s a very good question! Would Evans have looked for Knossos if the myth of the Minotaur hadn’t existed? Would Schliemann have searched for Troy if ancient texts had not recorded it? The answer is ‘no’. There are many examples of archaeology following the trail of breadcrumbs left in texts, and often they result in unexpected discoveries. Myth and legend have their roots in the geography, climate, social structure, and history of places, so using them as a way of thinking our way back into the past can be helpful. But often the reality is more surprising – history really is the best repository for all storytellers!
You have a new book for young readers on goddesses. What led you to study the worship of goddesses? What range of deities do you examine?
In writing Goddess I discovered that there really are as many permutations of divine women across time as there are real women across the globe. There are virtually no unifying factors, even down to gender, as many shapeshift into birds, animals, or elements, and can take male or female forms. I wanted to explore the world across time through the ways different groups worshipped women, but instead of uniformity, I found a staggering amount of variety! The world never felt as thrilling and varied as when I was comparing a Greek or Roman goddess like Venus, with a Nat spirit from Myanmar and an African deity like Mami Wata. It was the most exciting journey of discovery and I hope the readers get a flavour of that from the book.
left An Igbo figure of Mami Wata, one of the deities featured in Goddess.
An Igbo figure of Mami Wata, one of the deities featured in Goddess. Image: Minneapolis Institute of Art (CC PDM).
In your other new book, Femina, you consider outstanding women of the Middle Ages. Why did you choose this field to study? What did you find most inspiring or surprising?
Femina has taken years of research, but it was only in the writing of the book that I myself discovered what I was searching for. At the end of the book, I write that I had never expected to uncover some of what I did in the process and how I have developed a different view of the period I most love – the Middle Ages. The most surprising thing was how many women have been hidden in plain sight, overwritten by later authors or studied by a select few. Hildegard of Bingen, for example, has been known about in her homeland of the Rhineland since the 12th century. But only now are we able to collect her work together and scrutinise her huge outpouring of creativity in a way that brings her to life. I was struck by how recent developments, particularly in archaeology, are finding women that were entirely lost to the historical record. Their bones or the artefacts they have left behind show us a range of extraordinary women that reveal we have not always been the ‘second sex’, but have performed all the roles traditionally thought of as ‘male’.
An illumination of a choir of angels, one of the visions transcribed by medieval abbess, writer, and composer Hildegard of Bingen in her work Scivias. Image: Obelisk Art History / Public Domain.
I was also surprised by how much of our attitude towards gender differentiation is a modern invention. We’ve been given a version of women from the past, filtered through more recent Victorian, colonial, and post-industrial attitudes. So with this book I’m not only trying to introduce readers to a range of fascinating individuals from the past; I’m also attempting to change our perception of where we have come from, so we can shape where we are going. This is a bold claim, I know, but how we see the past can shape how we build the future.
Medieval treasure: Meet Janina Ramirez - the woman making history hip
8th October 2015
By Tim Hughes
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Janina Ramirez has shaken up the world of medieval history
Janina Ramirez has shaken up the world of medieval history
Tim Hughes meets the TV historian and Oxford academic Janina Ramirez, who has written a study of Britain's forgotten saints - and sinners
Janina Ramirez is a most unlikely medieval historian.
Young, engaging, blessed with jet black hair, cherry red lips and with a penchant for goth-chic dress, she looks more like the lead singer in a metal band than an expert in Latin, Old English, paleography and archaeology at Oxford University. But then that’s a big part of her appeal.
Sparky, enthusiastic and distinctly un-fusty, Dr Ramirez is doing to history what Nigella Lawson did to double cream.
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Her programmes for BBC TV, in which she unveiled Anglo-Saxon treasure, translated vivid Viking literature, revealed the secrets of medieval monarchs and poked around in ruined monasteries, have made her a household face.
Yet, she admits, she hadn’t realised quite how well-known she was until she began to be recognised around her home town of Woodstock.
“When you are doing TV there’s a delay between all the hours of filming, and the programmes actually coming out,” she says.
“And when my programme Treasures of the Anglo Saxons came out in 2010, I was totally unprepared.
“I had no idea what the viewing figures would be. I hoped to get up to 100,000, but we got a million viewers on BBC4 and two million on BBC2. The day after it was shown, I went out for a walk into town and people were staring, coming up and complimenting me.
“I was shaking so much I had to go home and hide under the duvet. I was really paranoid!”
Janina, 35 – a fun-loving mother-of-two, known to her friends as Nina – is relaxing over coffee in the bar of the Kings Arms in Woodstock. It’s a warm, lazy morning and sunlight streams through the windows.
“I do love it here,” she smiles, staring out at the street with its honey-coloured stone houses. “It’s so beautiful. You can feel the history of the place.”
Janina developed her love of history at school in, of all places, Slough.
After picking up a degree in English literature and language – specialising in Old and Middle English – from St Anne’s, Oxford, she headed north, completing her post-graduate studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York.
There she developed a passion for medieval art, and completed a PhD on the symbolism of birds. She went on to take up an art history lectureship, spending her spare time exploring the city’s rich medieval history and delving into drama, directing Beowulf and performing in medieval plays.
It’s no surprise that she has also fronted two rock bands – first with the unfortunately named Lolita and then with Rolemodels – with whom she still keeps in touch.
She returned to Oxford to became director for the Undergraduate Certificate in History of Art, via lecturing posts in Winchester and Warwick.
“I didn’t plan to do television,” she says. “I was just a badly-paid academic. I had no idea this was going to happen.
"I had a phone call when my little boy was tiny from someone at the BBC researching Anglo-Saxons. He wanted to talk for a few minutes but three hours later we were still talking, and my name was suggested as someone to front their programme. It was never an intent. But I teach with a lot of energy and passion, and treat television in the same way. I don’t see any difference. I don’t have a script, I just lecture.”
After the success of Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons, she presented documentaries on Icelandic literature (The Viking Sagas) and the stained glass of York Minster (Britain’s Most Fragile Treasure), wrote and presented a three-part series on the Royal Manuscript collection of the British Library (The Private Lives of Medieval Kings), and fronted shows on The Hundred Years’ War (Chivalry and Betrayal) and the first Gothic age (Architects of the Divine).
But it was this year’s three-part series on Britain’s monasteries, Saints and Sinners, which saw her elevated to celebrity status as our trendiest TV historian.
The show sprang from her research on the little-known saints of Anglo-Saxon England, The Private Lives of The Saints. The book, published last month, is a fascinating look at the lives of our often little-known, homegrown religious figureheads.
“Christianity was a multinational corporation of its time, its power spreading from the edge of the British Isles to the Middle East, and that’s what makes the saints fascinating.”
Despite being raised a Catholic, Janina – who comes from good Irish-Polish stock (she takes her surname from her Spanish husband) – is less than complimentary about these erstwhile cult figures, some of whom, she reveals, were very unholy indeed.
For every gesture of devotion, charity and good leadership, she reveals, is an act of greed, self-publicity and a hatful of fake miracles.
This is no pious hagiography. Janina is unflinching in her dissection of these early celebs, politicians and power-brokers – Alban, Brigid, Patrick, Gregory, Columba, Cuthbert, Wilfred, Alfred et al – presenting a rounded, unsentimental picture of some colourful, if sometimes unsavoury characters whose influence, nonetheless, echoes through the centuries.
“Some were local heroes who became tied in with Christianity whereas others had pan-European interests,” she says. “Christianity was a multinational corporation of its time, its power spread from the edge of the British Isles to the Middle East, and that’s what makes the saints fascinating.”
When I ask about her favourite saints she talks passionately about St Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, a powerful woman in a man’s world who convened a synod of bishops from around Europe in an age when communication and transport links were at best, tenuous.
“In the early stages of Christianity, before it entrenched itself, they were recognising the authority of this intelligent, educated woman," she says. "She was top dog… boss cat! The organisation that went into the Synod of Whitby is incredible. She brought together Irish monks who looked like hippies and important figures from Rome. Just to keep them housed and fed and to stop them killing each other was no small feat. She was a real mover and shaker.”
And then there’s Bede, who she says “wrote the history books.”
“He was a spin doctor of his time and one of the only Anglo-Saxon voices to have remained strong and clear across the millennia.
"He was someone who couldn’t stop writing,” she says with a broad smile. “The number of works he produced is amazing. He was like Stephen King in his output.”
And while she is keen to separate religion from what is, otherwise, a set of rollicking good tales, she admits there are glimmers of spirituality. “Many of them denied themselves and sought enlightenment in a most extreme way. Saints like Cuthbert, Columba and the early monks were people you could identify as religious extremists.”
While no longer playing with her band, Janina loves music, along with visiting theme parks, growing vegetables and trying to impart her love of history to her children. Next, she says, she plans to write an historical novel “in the same way Hillary Mantel has”.
“Some people criticise,” she says. “They can’t believe a young woman can do this. Some have been even nastier. But I spent so long doing lectures for £20 and working harder, and with more enthusiasm, than anyone else.”
And that has brought her something unexpected: her own fanbase. “There are fans,” she laughs. “They come from all sorts of demographics – from A-Level kids to octogenarians who love that I’m doing things the old way. And, yes, there’s a strong goth following too.
“I just hope some of this rubs off on them. I am not doing dumb TV but hard-hitting programmes, and if people are happy to sit through an hour of it, I’m delighted, as they may hear something they wouldn’t normally.
“And, to be honest, most people are really friendly. They come up and talk to me as if they know me – and even hug me. The thing is, I’m so bad at names I think I must know them too and say ‘hi’ back!”
“At least I’m not hiding under the duvet!”
Dr Janina Ramirez is a presenter, lecturer and researcher. She specialises in interpreting symbols, and examining art works within their historical context. Following a degree in English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, Nina went to the prestigious Centre for Medieval Studies in York. Here she completed an MA and PhD on birds in Anglo-Saxon art and literature.
Following her post-graduate study, she gained a lecturing post at the Department for Art History at York University. She has taught at Warwick and Winchester Universities, and is now Course Director for the Undergraduate Certificate in History of Art at the Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University. She also lectures for the Victoria and Albert Museum.
She has published widely on medieval art and literature, and has taught and researched across a broad chronological sweep, covering everything from the sculptures of antiquity to post-modern architecture. Her experience also stretches beyond the world of art, having lectured in archaeology, history, literature and language. In terms of presenting, she has worked on a number of documentaries for BBC4. These have included ‘Saints & Sinners: Britain’s Millennium of Monasteries’, ‘Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings’ and ‘Chivalry & Betrayal: The Hundred Years War’. She is a passionate and enthused academic driven by a desire to share ideas.
@DrJaninaRamirez
Dr Janina Ramirez
Honorary Visiting Fellow
Profile
Biography
BA (Oxon), MA, PhD (York)
Janina Ramirez is a lecturer, broadcaster and author. She completed her PhD on the Symbolic Life of Birds in Anglo-Saxon England at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York. She employs a cross-disciplinary approach to the medieval period, examining manuscripts, sculpture and metalwork alongside texts and archaeological evidence. Her latest monograph is entitled ‘The Private Lives of the Saints: Power, Passion and Politics in Anglo-Saxon England’. She has also published articles on the Codex Amiatinus, Anglo-Saxon ivories, and the Viking period.
Janina has taught art history at York, Warwick, and is now Course Director for the Undergraduate Diploma and Certificate in History of Art at the University of Oxford. She combines teaching with research and broadcasting. She has written and presented many hours of television for the BBC. Her programmes include ‘Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons’, ‘The Viking Sagas’, ‘Saints and Sinners: A Millennium of Monasteries’ and ‘The Private Lives of Medieval Kings’.
Key research interests:
Anglo-Saxon Art
The relationships between text and image
History and the Media
Dr Janina Ramirez
Research Fellow in History of Art
Dr Janina Ramirez is a lecturer, researcher, author and broadcaster. She specialises in interpreting symbols, medieval art, and examining visual culture in an interdisciplinary manner. Following a degree in English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, Nina completed her Masters and PhD at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York on the Symbolic Life of Birds in Anglo-Saxon England.
Janina has taught at York, Warwick and Winchester Universities, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and was Course Director for the Undergraduate Certificate and Diploma in History of Art at the Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University.
She has published extensively, including monographs on The Private Lives of Saints, Julian of Norwich and Beowulf. She has also written a series of children's novels and non-fiction, including Goddesses in collaboration with the British Museum. Her forthcoming book, Femina, is due for release July 22 with Penguin-Random house.
She has worked on a number of documentaries for the BBC, including the acclaimed 'Raiders of the Lost Past' series, ‘Saints & Sinners: Britain’s Millennium of Monasteries’, ‘Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings’ and ‘Chivalry & Betrayal: The Hundred Years War’. She is consultant on the York University/St Paul's Cathedral three-year AHRC-funded Pantheons project, is a patron of many organisations, including NSEAD, the Stained Glass Society and Oxford Festival of the Arts. She is currently supervising three DPhil students and would be interested in new applicants.
OCTOBER 10, 2018 BY SOMETHINGGOZITAN
Profile: Meet Janina Ramirez
Published as The Spirit of a Shield-Maiden* in OX magazine (Oct 2018)
*Shield-maiden: a feisty female warrior from Scandinavian folklore and mythology
Esther Lafferty spent an afternoon with Dr Janina Ramirez, cultural historian, lecturer at Oxford University, BBC TV presenter and modern day Oxfordshire Shield Maiden to hear about her new children’s book, Riddle of the Runes and the journey through life and medieval history that led her to this point.
‘My first dream, as far back as I can remember, was to be a writer. I learnt to read early and was very driven at school,’ begins Janina, bright-eyed and bursting with enthusiasm. ‘I was extremely energetic as a child, and my parents even got bought me a kitten hoping that playing with the kitten would tire me out too – the cat was called Kit-Kat so that they could Have A Break!’ ‘
‘In some ways I had rather a bohemian childhood on the edge of a Berkshire village in woodlands – my dad was a DJ and inventor, and my mum an artist and primary-school teacher with an incredible imagination so I believed I could do anything – although life was perhaps frustratingly suburban too. I went on the bus to school in Slough every day and it took hours so I became very good at sleeping and travelling, cat napping en-route. That’s actually a great life-skill for working in television. When we are filming we can be up before dawn for an early shoot, and still filming at midnight so it’s a real talent to be able to curl up in the shade, like a cat, and grab 40 winks.’
Other than her parents, Janina describes two influential characters that led her to Oxford and into art history. The first was an uncle who arrived in the UK from Poland, alone as a badly-injured young teenager during the Second World War, his extended family killed in a single aerial attack whilst his father was at war. Throwing himself on the mercy of the embassy here, he seized the opportunities offered to him, and went on to study History at Balliol College, Oxford. It was his story, his interest in the past and the tales he told that triggered Janina’s interest in history. ‘History as a discipline, however,’ she explains, ‘doesn’t allow enough for the mysterious, for myths and legends: tales told throughout history are filtered through human interpretations of events and their meanings. I felt there was more to the story than the documented fact.’
Janina also had an English teacher in sixth form who introduced her to inspirational authors including Sylvia Plath and Samuel Beckett and, with writing children’s books still her dream, she determined to follow her teacher’s path to Oxford, studying English at St Anne’s College.
Studying at Oxford, she found herself increasingly drawn to the medieval period, developing a passion for archeology and artefacts, and specialising further, in York, on Bird Symbolism in early medieval England, drawing on both English literature and art history. It was as a result of this focus that she was invited to present BBC art history programmes.
‘My first series ‘Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons’ was probably the most successful series I have made,’ she smiles. ‘But it was also the most challenging and it was traumatic too. When the first programme aired I had lots of unsolicited comments, most of which are lovely but others were shockingly personal and vitriolic for no apparent reason. I hid for a few days, horrified, and then I realised I had to toughen up. I’d only quite recently had my first child – having been told not to expect to have children because of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome – and fortunately having a miracle baby at home helped me keep things in proportion.’
‘Only a year previously things had been very different. We had decided to move back south from York for family reasons. We couldn’t afford to rent in Oxford but fell in love with Woodstock’s town square on a sunny day and found a place to live there. Naively, as it turned out, I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to get a lecturing position with one of the universities in the area. I was wrong. I was rejected from everything. Our friends all seemed to be well on their way to 2.4 children and good-sized mortgages and I felt like I was at crisis point, the end of the road for my career in academia! I was applying for an administrative job at The Ashmolean, an inspiring environment at least, but my wonderful husband who’s always been my greatest supporter told me to stick with my dream – we still had about six week’s money left. And in that six weeks everything changed! I had phone calls from the Universities of Oxford and Warwick and began working with them both, and then we found out I was pregnant. And then it was actually in the church whilst my son was being christened that I had the first phone call from the BBC, so I am sure he is my lucky charm!’
‘A BBC researcher considering ideas for new series had googled Anglo-Saxon art and two names appeared: the first was my PhD supervisor who’d moved to Australia, and the other was me!’ she explains. ‘ I chatted about the idea and thought I’d never hear another word but three months later they asked me to show them around the Ashmolean. I could hardly believe it when they came back and said not only had they chosen to put the Anglo-Saxon idea into production but they’d like me to present it!’
For anyone who meets Janina, this comes as no surprise: her intelligent raven-haired exuberance is now a familiar sight on BB2 and BBC4. She has appeared in more than ten TV programmes and series covering topics from the Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, to the Hundred Years War and The Reformation.
‘Paradoxically, I think the more success you have the smaller your ego becomes because something momentous – like the publication of Riddle of the Runes – happens and you’ve been building up to that moment all your life and then suddenly it has passed and the world hasn’t changed and you realise how small and insignificant you are,’ she grins.
Riddle of the Runes is Janina’s first children’s book, an exciting adventure story for children following the cool nine-year old heroine, Alva, and her family on an quest through snowy terrain in the Viking era, Janina’s favourite. ‘I love the Viking attitude to women,’ Janina continues. ‘They never doubted that women were capable of doing everything men did. They trained as warriors just as the men did, and the women managed everything at home, the farming and physical labour as well as family. As a child I found that combination of strength, confidence and competence compelling and that’s just how I wanted Alva to be.’
And sitting across from Janina, I can see that Alva’s just like her, except Alva’s braids are flame-red. ‘I always wanted red hair,’ Janina laughs!
Riddle of the Runes: a review
Riddle of the Runes is an exciting adventure quest for junior-age children (and anyone who’s ever been one) set in the cold north of the Viking era. And with crisp snow underfoot and fur-lined hoods, a cosy hearth and the promise of treasure, a talking raven and a coded message to unravel, everything a good adventurer requires is packed within the pages of the book.
Before the story starts, there’s a picture gallery of the main characters to pore over, and a dramatic map of Kilsgard to set the scene. And then we meet flame-haired Alva – her energy and strength are clear from the crisp punchy sentences of the very first paragraph. I was hooked.
Alva is the pint-sized heroine I desperately wanted to be at age 9 (and 19, 29 and 39). She’s bright and full of beans, and she’s alive with enviable bravery and absolute integrity. With a tamed wolf at her side she bounds through life her braids flying, like a feisty Pippi-Longstocking (with manners) for the twenty-first century.
In beautifully-written prose underpinned by accurate historical details, we follow Alva, her Uncle Magnus and her mother Brianna through the pages on the trail of something invaluable as they work together to unravel the riddle written in runes unearthed during an investigation of an unexpected event in the opening chapter. These runes are genuine symbols used by the Norse men and it is fascinating to follow their interpretation. With evocative illustrations, woven into the solving of the Runes you’ll find the additional threads of the importance of family, of duty and of kindness which soften the breathless pace of discovery and together provide a gentle understanding of Viking society, from their daily lives to their superstitions and their Gods.
Riddle of the Runes, published by Oxford University Press, is available in all good bookshop.
Profile·14th January 2020
In Conversation: Dr. Janina Ramirez, Presenter and Historian
Alex Haveron-Jones
Dr. Janina Ramirez is a popular art and cultural historian, and a member of staff at the University; studying English at St. Anne’s, Janina went on to study for an MA and PhD. She has presented a number of successful documentaries for the BBC and written numerous books, including a three-part ‘Viking Mystery’ series for children, evoking the early history she is so fascinated by. Combining Medieval history and culture with her fantastically unique style, Janina is invigorating history with a sense of freshness for a new, younger audience.
Janina and I discuss the significance between past and present, historical ‘fake news’, women in broadcasting and academics, and her upcoming projects.
Politically, these are rather incohesive times… does delving into the comparatively rudimentary lives and strange practices of the medieval world make modern society seem a little less bleak?
I’d argue they were hardly rudimentary and not really that strange. If there’s one thing I take away from studying the past it’s that humans have always been as complex and fascinating as we are now. We simply stand on the shoulders of giants. I have also taken heart from the vacillations I see across time. For every technological or ideological step forward, there is a pendulum swing backwards, but humanity is constantly striving for change. The people of the medieval period fascinate me in that many of them could develop insights that were quite astonishing given that they lived before many of the major scientific discoveries. I am always drawn to the beautiful and enduring through time and so looking backwards always gives me hope for the present and future.
In a recent tweet, you fleetingly mentioned a ‘pendulum of time’: do you see any similarities between the brutal culture of Anglo-Saxon Britain and the ruthless politics of today?
Again I’d emphasise that our understanding of the Early Medieval period is not necessarily true and has been conditioned by generations of historians who have presented it as ‘nasty, brutish and short’. This is something I’ve worked hard to unravel. Our political views in parts of the West are narrow and exclusive. We rarely compare what we see as ‘ruthless’ with leadership and brutality taking place in our own lifetimes in other parts of the world, let alone in relation to the past. The social organisation of the Early Medieval period meant that many sectors of society would simply be oblivious to many of the political machinations taking place around them. We live in a time of hyper-communication and this means every event is open to scrutiny. It is arguably no more or less ruthless. We are just more aware.
Our political views in parts of the West are narrow and exclusive. We rarely compare what we see as ‘ruthless’ with leadership and brutality taking place in our own lifetimes in other parts of the world, let alone in relation to the past.
If you could impose one rule from Medieval society on modern-day Britain, what would it be?
As with everything from the past it is in a state of flux and change. Rules or laws are no different. So I’d have to pinpoint one rule from one time and one moment. It would be the reign of Alfred the Great. He was battling an unenviable force of Vikings that were close to conquering all of Britain. In the face of such military strife he didn’t channel all his (much depleted) funds into warfare. Instead he determined to set an equal amount aside for civic redevelopment and education. His efforts ensured the continuation of learning, art, literature, historical documentation and laid the foundations for many of the towns and cities we live in today. That’s historical foresight for you!
Trump’s relentless rhetoric has caused ‘fake news’ to become a topic with which everybody is now familiar. Would you say that there is are elements shared with ‘fake news’ in the study of history, where events are contested and contemporary historians battle with differing interpretations?
This is the subject of my new book actually. I am consistently horrified by how our understanding of the past is founded on lies and manipulation. It is to be expected of course, as every generation rewrites the past in a way that suits their present. But much of the blame lies at the feet of the nineteenth-century scholars. Their filtering of historical events has meant many medieval lives were simply ignored and lost, or were rewritten so as to fit a new imperial and colonial superpower. I’m trying to return to original sources and find a version of the past that is perhaps more ‘true’, but it is every scholar’s fate that we sieve what we study through ourselves and the times in which we live. It is leading to some excellent historical detective work though.
I am consistently horrified by how our understanding of the past is founded on lies and manipulation.
Throughout your career, you’ve handled some fascinating and wonderfully precious objects; what’s the most memorable or profound artefact which you’ve studied?
There have been many. Handling the mummified head of Simon Sudbury, the archbishop and chancellor executed during the Peasant’s Revolt, was deeply moving. However, I’d say the artefact that I’ve connected with most strongly over the past decades is less bound up with war and suffering, and more a symbol of the great achievements of the past. It’s the Codex Amiatinus, a manuscript which came back to the UK for the first time in over a millennium at the recent Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library. It is the oldest surviving individually bound complete copy of the Vulgate Bible and until the last century was thought to have been made in Italy. However, some clever detective work uncovered the original inscription which said it had, in fact, been produced by first-generation Christians on the edge of the known world – in Newcastle! Technologically it was equivalent to developing the first super computer in the eighth-century and it is so heavy it takes two men to carry it.
Your work on television (as well as you children’s books) has helped in making history a subject which is engaging with a much wider audience; why do you think it’s so important that we understand the past?
How can we know who we are without looking backwards? Each of us as individuals have an urge to understand where we have come from, what has happened to us, and how we have been affected by events taking place around us. That is studying history in miniature. What’s more, every subject – maths, medicine, engineering, physics – they all have a history and we get to where we are through the efforts of those who came before us. To be blind to the importance of the past is to wander blind into the future. History should not be considered an auxiliary subject or something we study ‘for love’. It should be the fundamental basis of how we make sense of how we live today.
It’s fair to say that you’ve been very well received by the general public: before you television career, however, how do you think that academic society responded to your being a somewhat ‘unusual’ historian – that is, not an old, white man with a stuffy fashion sense!
I’ve been very lucky with the way I’ve been received by the public. I’d say social media platforms like Twitter help no end, as I’m able to connect directly with people who support my work, and this has actually led to new friendships. I started working in television completely by accident when a BBC researcher typed ‘Anglo-Saxon art’ into Google and my PhD thesis popped up. Being on television has never been the end goal of my work, but it is part of what I love doing – communicating my passion for the past. I made a pact with myself when I first started reaching out through public engagement that I would present the true me. I am unconventional, I like listening to esoteric music, I enjoy socialising and I’m full of love and enthusiasm. That’s the real me and I don’t hide it in favour of what might be deemed more ‘acceptable’. Who knows if that’s a good idea or not, but it’s the only way I could share my ideas with complete sincerity.
I am unconventional, I like listening to esoteric music, I enjoy socialising and I’m full of love and enthusiasm. That’s the real me and I don’t hide it in favour of what might be deemed more ‘acceptable’.
You’ve worked with a number of female historians – Lucy Worsley and Alice Roberts, for example – would you say that the ‘academic landscape’ has changed since when you first started your career?
It most certainly has. I particularly welcome the new set of voices that are appearing on our screens, spear-headed by David Olusoga, but joined now by Emma Dabiri and Sona Datta. Alice and Lucy are dear friends, as is the pioneer of women on television, Bettany Hughes. We all support each other and recognise in each other a shared spirit of endeavour. When I first began making history documentaries even the style of delivery was different. A man in a suit would walk slowly towards the camera while sharing ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ about a period. Now we are more open to alternative viewpoints, to individual passion being expressed and to hearing a range of opinions. The viewing public has changed their tastes and we have to listen to what they want now. The reason programmes like ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ and ‘A House Through Time’ work so well is they put us – the general public – into history. I hope this trend continues.
Are you working on any new fiction or television projects?
I’m busier than ever which is exciting and terrifying! I’m completing the final book in my children’s fiction series, writing non-fiction for children and am embarking on my biggest work to date exploring lost women from the medieval period. I have a number of exciting film projects coming across 2020 and continue to share my love of Art History through my Art Detective podcast. It relaunches soon and our first guest is Sir David Attenborough talking about J.M.W. Turner! I also work full-time at Oxford University and have two children that are my main job! So I’m not getting much sleep at the moment. But I’m so lucky to be able to make a living from sharing what I love. I can cat nap in between!
Ramirez, Janina
Way of the Waves (A Viking Mystery)
Illustrated by David Wyatt
Oxford, 2019, pp240, [pounds sterling]6.99 978 0 19 276635 9
A wonderful, convincing Viking adventure with a plucky heroine and her pet wolf on a quest to track down her father. It is beautifully illustrated with single page and regular double page spreads and is a story of substance and excitement.
The historical detail is authoritative and fascinating but fills out the adventure rather than dominates it--adults may want to follow up some of the historical details, but younger readers will be swept up in the gripping quest. Highly recommended for all readers aged 9 to 12. I would be tempted to read it aloud to a class of Year 5 and 6 pupils in instalments, and it would be a fun complement to a Vikings project.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Nelson, Rachel Ayers. "Way of the Waves (A Viking Mystery)." School Librarian, vol. 67, no. 4, winter 2019, p. 232. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A609890772/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f511545d. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Janina Ramirez
JULIAN OF NORWICH
A very brief history
97pp. SPCK. 12.99 [pounds sterling].
978 0 281 07737 3
The author, apresenter of BBC programmes on medieval topics, states in her preface that Julian of Norwich "deserves to be better known". This is a surprising statement. There are scores of books about her in print. It might seem strange to a modern reader that a woman living in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, whose name we do not know "Julian" being derived from the name of St Julian's, Norwich, to which her cell was attached--should have such importance today. Perhaps equally surprising is that all we know about her comes from her book Revelations of Divine Love. This was written while she was an anchoress, meaning she had made the choice to spend the rest of her life shut in that cell. But this book is not only the first known writing by a woman in English, it also reveals sophisticated and original theological thought. Perhaps Julian's wider fame results from the message of hope and reassurance that her book gives to those facing hardship.
Janina Ramirez offers her short book as her "small contribution" to making Julian known. Therefore it can be presumed that her target readers are those who know little or nothing about Julian of Norwich, a group who are also likely to know little about medieval English history and literature or Christian theology. The first two chapters, "Introducing Julian" and "Julian's Life and Times", are clearly directed at such readers. But someone with no background in Christian thought will probably find the third chapter, "Themes in Revelations of Divine Love", very hard going.
The final chapter covers some of the research discussed in Ramirez's broadcast in July about the history of the manuscripts of Julian's works, a topic unlikely to appeal to the target readers. It does, however, tell the amazing story of the escape of the most reliable of these manuscripts from destruction during both the English Reformation and the French Revolution.
Will this little book help to make Julian better known? Perhaps it will be read by those who saw the BBC programme but had not previously heard of Julian of Norwich. But given the varied levels of historical and religious knowledge in its readers it seems to presume, and the fact that it is published by a specialist religious publisher, it is difficult to see how it will reach this goal.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 NI Syndication Limited
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/
Source Citation
Source Citation
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Pearson, Hilary. "JULIAN OF NORWICH: A very brief history." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 5933, 16 Dec. 2016, pp. 30+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635180021/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=61d8d035. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Ramirez, Janina
Riddle of the Runes (A Viking Mystery)
Illustrated by David Wyatt
Oxford, 2018, pp256, 6.99 [pounds sterling] 978 0 19 276633 5
Set in the Viking era, this novel combines historical adventure with a mystery story. Shield maiden Alva is a would-be investigator like her Uncle Magnus. When an English monk turns up in their village with a strange tale of a secret casket and a kidnap and possible murder, she is determined to be first to solve the mystery. From her uncle she has learned observation and reasoned deduction, to which she adds her own dogged determination to find answers. This often leads her into trouble with her stern uncle and overprotective mother. Brave and stubborn, Alva is an engaging heroine about whom we want to read more.
For the young reader, as well as an introduction to reading runes, there is much to be gleaned about Viking lore and culture in the background detail; but this does not detract from the drama and excitement of Alva's chase across the Scandinavian landscape with her faithful pet wolf Fenrir.
Kathryn Tyson
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Tyson, Kathryn. "Riddle of the Runes (A Viking Mystery)." School Librarian, vol. 66, no. 4, winter 2018, p. 238. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A568840268/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=55fac641. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
FEMINA A new history of the Middle Ages, through the women written out of it JANINA RAMIREZ 464pp. WH Allen. 22 [pounds sterling].
Halfway through Femina, her new history of women in the Middle Ages, Janina Ramirez describes an exquisite alms purse that once belonged to Jadwiga, the fourteenth-century female "king" of Poland who left the man she loved to lead her country. The purse, now on display at Wawel Cathedral, is made of silk and decorated with brightly coloured spheres and tassels. It may have held holy relics as well as coins for the poor, which makes it even more intriguing that the scenes embroidered on it feature the adulterous lovers Tristan and Isolde.
This gorgeous item is a point of contact with a powerful medieval woman who died in childbirth, but otherwise far exceeded her society's expectations. Jadwiga was a Polish national icon and was finally canonized in the Catholic Church in 1997. But, as Ramirez suggests, the purse seems to reveal something else about who she was as a person. It reflects her deep faith, her learning and sophistication, even her tumultuous romantic life. Still, it is not clear which scenes from the Tristan and Isolde story are depicted on it, nor whether they are meant to celebrate tragic passion or its abandonment in favour of duty. Like much of the evidence for women's lives that Ramirez introduces, the alms purse remains enigmatic, open to new interpretations.
Femina's aim is to multiply the stories we tell about the medieval past, placing women in the starring roles. Ramirez is a gifted storyteller, taking readers across Europe and to the Middle East in her quest for female agency. She does not dwell on the obvious candidates--Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda--with whom readers are probably already familiar. Instead her cast includes a Swedish woman buried in full armour with two horses, a Cathar spy for the Inquisition, a transgender sex worker in fourteenth-century London and the anonymous women, possibly nuns, who stitched the Battle of Hastings and ninety-three penises onto the Bayeux Tapestry.
Ramirez approaches each of these women through the eyes of more recent historical advocates. The most memorable of these is Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette who threw herself in front of the king's horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. Davison was also a scholar of the Middle Ages, which she idealized as a source of revolutionary community and tolerance. Her protest may have been inspired by a scene in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, in which Theban women petition Theseus for aid by stopping his horse. Her school nickname was "the Faire Emelye", after another character in that story. Anecdotes such as this underpin a key argument in Femina: that our understanding of the Middle Ages is shaped by the ideals and biases of those who have come since. For example, while the political achievements of AEthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, in pushing back the Danes were recognized by chroniclers close to her own time, they were later "eclipsed" by the cult that developed around her father, Alfred the Great. "She was a victim not of medieval prejudice", writes Ramirez, "but of modern attitudes towards female leadership."
Recent years have witnessed a boom in books recovering the lives and voices of women who lived long ago. The list ranges from works of history such as Mary Beard's Women & Power (TLS, March 30, 2018) and Kara Cooney's When Women Ruled the World (2018) to novels like Lauren Groff's Matrix (TLS, November 5, 2021) and Rivka Galchen's Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (2021). The challenge in such projects is to highlight the agency women have exercised in the past while acknowledging its physical and social conditions. How an author does this reveals a great deal--not just about her view of historical women, but about her understanding of "agency" itself.
Femina's cover features a brilliant reproduction of Hildegard of Bingen's "cosmic egg", a mystical vision of an organic universe contained in a womblike structure, but, strikingly, none of its nine chapters is explicitly devoted to roles that women typically occupied--to mystics, abbesses, mothers, wives or widows. They feature in the chapters themselves, to be sure, but rebranded, with titles that are masculine or genderless, as outlaws, warriors, movers and shakers. Of course it's worth showing that women contributed to the world as men did. But many medieval women, especially noble ones, exercised power precisely through roles that can now seem feminine. Mothers forged alliances by organizing their children's marriages, wives managed estates in their husbands' absences and abbesses established cults for local saints and cultivated networks of political influence. Here is a missed opportunity to push back against common stereotypes about the past: that the Church was solely oppressive to women or that being married and having children always meant a life of subjugation.
Femina is otherwise refreshingly nuanced. Ramirez is honest about the fact that her approach is "no less biased" than that of her predecessors. Hers is not a "Great Woman" version of history, however; rather, it shows the variety of relationships women could have with men. Hilda of Whitby counselled kings and educated men who would go on to be bishops. Hildegard of Bingen struggled to gain independence for her community from Abbot Kuno, but her visions were endorsed by luminaries such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugene III. The Polish nobility agreed to crown Jadwiga as king, but also that insisted she leave her fiance, William of Habsburg, and marry the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Margery Kempe was grilled by male churchmen and harassed by fellow pilgrims, but other men helped her on her travels. The picture that emerges is of women and men navigating institutions, building alliances, competing for power and working within their given social roles as best they could.
Likewise, Ramirez resists the urge to make general pronouncements based on individual cases. She discusses, for example, a highly publicized discovery, in 2017, that a body buried in Birka, Sweden, with the full accoutrements of a fighter had the DNA of a woman. Instead of proving "that all Viking women were the shield-maidens of legend", the find forced archaeologists to rethink the assumption that grave goods are a straightforward indicator of the deceased person's gender. In isolated and beleaguered communities, Ramirez points out, women would have had to do the same work as men --including taking up arms to defend their home.
Perhaps it is inevitable that a book of such broad scope will at times frustrate specialists. The closer Ramirez came to my own area of study, the more I found to quibble with. The gripping story of Emily Davison and her medieval role models that begins the book closely follows the beats of an article by the medievalist Carolyn Collette, which is cited only once early on. In the chapter on Margery Kempe we learn that "despite demanding a sex ban from her husband, Margery had an impressive 14 children". This gets things the wrong way round: Margery finally asked her husband for a chaste marriage when she was around forty years old. Ramirez calls a later episode in which Margery cares for her senile, incontinent husband "touching" and "poignant", which glosses over the fact that she hated doing it, considered it a punishment for her lusts and had to imagine herself caring for Christ in order to cope. Elsewhere, Theodore of Tarsus, the seventh-century churchman who became the Archbishop of Canterbury, is designated "Greek/ Turkish", which is straightforwardly anachronistic. Theodore was a Byzantine Greek who experienced the Persian occupation of his town as a child, but he lived four centuries before the Seljuk Turks conquered Anatolia.
These are arguably small errors, but they suggest an overall hastiness. They also make one wonder about the accuracy of other material. Historians writing for a general audience necessarily iron out some scholarly subtleties, but they should, if anything, be more careful with the evidence than their academic colleagues. Lay readers do not have access to their sources, and what appears in print tends to acquire the solidity of fact. It is best, then, to read Femina as Janina Ramirez herself proposes: as an invitation to look at the past afresh and to stay open to the possibility that it may have been more varied than we once thought.
Irina Dumitrescu teaches medieval literature at the University of Bonn
Caption: Anonymous painting of Jogaila and Jadwiga of Poland, from the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum, Krakow
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 NI Syndication Limited
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Dumitrescu, Irina. "Excellent women: Female agency in the medieval world." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 6242, 18 Nov. 2022, p. 24. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A729497738/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=771e11ce. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
by Janina Ramirez
W.H. Allen, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 384
Isn't it irritating when your ancestral manuscript collection gets in the way of your ping-pong tournament? That was Colonel Butler-Bowden's predicament in the early 1930s. He was so peeved by the heap of rubbishy papers cluttering up his games cupboard that he declared his intention to burn the lot. Luckily, his ping-pong companion that day happened to be a curator at the V&A, so the colonel was dissuaded from bookburning and his manuscripts were shipped instead to the museum's London archives.
Among the collection was the unique edition of the Book of Margery Kempe, often described as the first autobiography in English, a sensational account of a woman's mystical visions, travels and tribulations. For centuries, while her book hibernated in the Butler-Bowden estate, Kempe was completely unknown.
Janina Ramirez tells two significant stories here: the forgotten lives of medieval women and the scholars' rediscovery of their records. She isn't the first to describe the reappearance of Kempe's extraordinary book, but she tells the story well, among many other catchy and varied examples. You might remember the Birka 'warrior woman' who went viral in 2017 after new DNA analysis revealed XX chromosomes in a Viking skeleton. But you might not be familiar with Margerete Kuhn, who in 1948 crossed from recently partitioned East to West Berlin secretly carrying a priceless volume of the mystic Hildegard of Bingen's writings.
Ramirez takes a broad scope both in time and geography, ranging from the 7th to the 15th centuries and crossing from East Anglia to the Rhineland to Krakow. Throughout, her history is led by new protagonists, from the Mercian Queen Aethelflaed (the daughter of Alfred the Great) to the anonymous embroiderers of the Bayeux Tapestry.
She emphasises the fragility of these histories, which--besides the general inclination of the past towards disintegration--have been subject to deliberate erasure. During the English Reformation, monastic libraries were catalogued, as the reformers made tricky decisions about which books to keep and which to destroy. The purging of libraries seems to have been a bureaucratic process, lacking the drama of iconoclastic mobs but no less chilling for being laborious. The title of Ramirez's book derives from the label used during this classification process. 'Femina' indicated a woman's authorship and signalled that a manuscript was not worth keeping. Given the importance Ramirez attaches to the label, it would have been satisfying to have had more details about this process and its results. For instance, how many books were marked 'Femina'--and did any survive, despite the hostile cataloguers' efforts?
As Ramirez reminds us, there are real, immediate consequences to the way in which medieval history is told. From the Third Reich to the alt-right, the iconography of the Middle Ages has been used to give voice to white supremacist propaganda. Ramirez rejects this 'misappropriation' of history and offers up her cosmopolitan narratives of medieval women's lives as an antidote. But she doesn't fall into the trap of sanitising the past. Medieval racism and misogyny remain visible in her account, as seen from the perspective (mostly) of those affected.
You may be wondering what this book says about feminism. The author avoids using modern terms to describe medieval lives, so does not characterise the women in her history as proto-feminist heroines. However, she is clear that her project builds on the research of feminist scholars from the 19th century onwards, whose work has often been equally overlooked.
In her last chapter, she turns briefly to the marvellous example of Rykener, the person who presented variously as 'Eleanor' and 'John' and slept profitably around medieval Oxford and London until arrested in 1394. (I won't spoil the full story if you don't know it.) Do I wish there had been more about Rykener, or about the fluidity of medieval gender? A little, but not really. Ramirez asks us to see her book as a beginning. There are many who can take up those stories where she leaves off, and others have written on Rykener since the 1990s: head to Carolyn Dinshaw's Getting Medieval for an in-depth account.
Which brings me to a general point about Femina. In many instances Ramirez retells episodes that, within a specialist field, are already well studied. Does that mean that her history isn't 'new'? I think the book still stands up to its subtitle's claim. With such a range of characters there will be something new here for everyone. And it's about time these stories had a wider audience. They've been waiting long enough.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
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Myerson, Eleanor. "Uncovering the female past." Spectator, vol. 349, no. 10116, 16 July 2022, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A711331911/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5091a786. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
Janina Ramirez
WH Allen, 464pp, 22 [pounds sterling]
In the Middle Ages, women governed men and led them into battle. So why aren't our history books full of them?
On the island of Bjorko, in Lake Malaren, Sweden, is a curious-looking landscape of gently undulating grassy mounds, from which more than 1,000 burials have been unearthed. This grave field is part of Birka, a Viking settlement that was occupied between 750 and 950 AD. When the skeleton marked as "Bj 581" was first excavated there in the late 19th century, it was assumed to be that of a man because of the axe, sword, spears and quiver of arrows buried alongside it, and was dubbed the "Birka Warrior". This identification was questioned in the 1970s, as the slender forearm and the wide inlet of the pelvis were commonly female characteristics, but it wasn't until 2017 that DNA extracted from a tooth showed two X chromosomes. The Birka Warrior was a woman.
Surviving law codes show that Viking women could own property, run their own estates and divorce their husbands if improperly treated. At Birka, the weights and scales of traders were found in more female graves than male. The incredibly preserved Oseberg ship, one of two now displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, was found in the burial mound of two high-status women. The Vikings even venerated women as gods: their second most important deity was Freyja, goddess of no less than love, death, sex, beauty and war. Given what we now know of women's place in Viking society, "the grave at Birka suddenly seems less of an anomaly", writes the BBC broadcaster and Oxford academic Janina Ramirez in Femina, an interdisciplinary, revisionist history of the women of the Middle Ages.
If some historical female figures have been unwittingly overlooked, others were deliberately erased by those threatened by their power. The name of Alfred the Great, the 9th-century king of Wessex, has become legend, but few have heard of his daughter, AEthelflaed. The noblemen of the kingdom elected AEthelflaed ruler of Mercia (roughly, the modern-day Midlands) following the deaths of her father and husband--a rare event in early medieval history. She negotiated with and commanded the loyalty of Vikings, and her armies triumphed in some of the most important battles of the early 10th century, taking Derby and Leicester. The Vikings of York were prepared to cede to her and, had she not died before they could, AEthelflaed would be venerated as the woman who unified England. A 12th-century poem remembers her thus:
Heroic AEthelflaed! Great in martial fame,
A man in valour, though a woman by your name:
Your warlike hosts by nature you obeyed,
Conquered over both, though born by sex a maid.
Before her death, AEthelflaed ensured that her crown would go to her daughter, AElfwynn--the only time rule passed from one woman to another in early medieval England. And yet, the Lady of the Mercians is little known. Ramirez writes that her brother Edward, who succeeded Alfred as king of Wessex, "actively suppressed her reputation" out of fear that her power might rival his, and removed AElfwynn from the throne she had inherited.
If there is a logic behind Ramirez's selection of these women, it is not explained, though it is surely deliberate that her chosen figures are less familiar than, say, Margaret of Anjou, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Empress Matilda, about whom many books have already been written. Also considered are Jadwiga, the 14th-century female king of Poland, who was one of only two women in Europe to have been titled "Rex" rather than "Regina" (the other was her sister Mary, king of Hungary); and Margery Kempe, a Christian mystic and contemporary of Joan of Arc, whose Book is considered by some to be the first autobiography written in English, and whose pilgrimages took her from Norway to the Middle East. Queen Cynethryth jointly ruled Mercia with her husband Offa (of Offa's Dyke fame) for 25 years in the 8th century and is the only Western medieval woman to have had her own coinage minted--the earliest known depiction of an English queen. She signed herself "Queen of the Mercians by the Grace of God" long before the concept of the divine right of kings was enshrined in the motto of the English monarch, "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right"), by Henry V.
Ramirez begins each chapter by considering an artefact linked to one of her subjects--a structure that, when it works (as in the case of the Birka Warrior), is illuminating, but feels repetitive and tenuous when it doesn't. In one chapter, the Bayeux Tapestry is used as a jumping-off point to write about Queen Emma: the wife of two successive kings of England, AEthelred the Unready and Cnut, today we might call her the "continuity candidate". Ramirez theorises that Emma may be the tapestry's mysterious "AElfgyva". Six pages are given over to her story, before Ramirez concludes "it is unlikely to be Emma depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry". Both Queen Emma and the tapestry are more than worthy of inclusion in Femina, but their framing here is unnecessarily distracting.
More successful are Ramirez's portraits of religious figures such as nuns and mystics, through which she convincingly argues that in the Middle Ages there was an expansive and stimulating role for women in the Church. Before nunneries were closed during the Reformation, monastic life allowed noblewomen to "bypass marriages... and instead form their own centres of learning where they could be rich, respected and remembered". Early medieval convents weren't the places of austerity we might imagine, either: archaeological finds at the site of a double monastery in Whitby include decorative hairpins, books with covers of gold and a comb inscribed with runes.
Of the monastery's founder, Hild, Bede writes that "kings and princes sought ... her counsel". In 664 she presided over the consequential Synod of Whitby, at which the church of Northumbria was brought into line with the Catholic church of Rome; five men who trained under her went on to become bishops. "If there were king-makers in the medieval world," writes Ramirez, "then she was the bishop-maker."
Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German abbess who had visions from a young age and wrote several works of theology documenting and interpreting them, is perhaps the most remarkable of Ramirez's women of God. A polymath whose life could fill Ramirez's pages many times over, she was a composer, writer and mystic who corresponded with three popes, Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her words are shockingly modern: in one treatise she gives instructions for performing an abortion; in another, she encourages the drinking of beer, since it "fattens the flesh and ... lends a beautiful colour to the face".
She wrote graphically about sex, too, defying preconceptions of the chaste abbess--the first known description of the sensation of the female orgasm, written in 1150, was Hildegard's. In her time, her works weren't rejected or censored, but were studied by scholars and even endorsed by the pope. "It is not simply that she is extraordinary," Ramirez concludes, "but the world she grew up in was more hospitable to extraordinary women than we might think."
The word "femina" was an annotation used in post-Reformation libraries to mark books that were written by women and were therefore "less worthy of preservation". It is a neat illustration of the way the motivations and biases of those who record history can change it. But despite her tantalising title, Ramirez spends too much time on the what of her subjects' stories, and too little considering how and why they were lost from history. Just one paragraph, for example, is dedicated to how Hildegard, so venerated and accepted by her male contemporaries, came to need rediscovering in Femina. Are there parallels to be drawn between the fears of the medieval men who propagandised and embellished male narratives in order to diminish women such as /Ethelflasd, and the Victorian historians who preferred the study of Great Men and could not recognise a female skeleton for what it was? There is, of course, value in plainly recognising previously neglected women for the great thinkers and nation-makers they were. But while each of her case studies is fascinating, Ramirez identifies little that links her disparate subjects apart from their gender, and so Femina is missing a broad, considered thesis beyond the obvious question: "But what about women?"
Caption: Northern powerhouse Freyja was the Norse goddess of war, beauty, love, sex and death (illustration circa 1900)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
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Bailey, Pippa. "When women were warriors." New Statesman, vol. 151, no. 5681, 19 Aug. 2022, pp. 42+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A715983166/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ee2230d5. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
Janina Ramirez. Hanover Square, $29.99 (464p) ISBN 978-1-335-49852-6
Historian Ramirez (Julian of Norwich) spotlights in this vibrant and accessible account remarkable medieval women including polymath Hildegard of Bingen and Margery Kempe, author of the first autobiography written in English. Diligently sifting through monastic, legal, and diplomatic materials, Ramirez unearths intriguing clues about the power medieval women held and the way they lived, despite contemporaneous efforts to remove them from the historical record. In 10th-century England, for example, AEthelflasd, Lady of the Mercians, ruled the kingdom of Mercia after her husband's death and excelled as a military strategist against the Vikings, but is not remembered as well as her male relatives, largely because her brother "suppressed her reputation in order to bolster his position as king of Wessex." The chapter beginnings, which recount relevant archaeological discoveries or scholarly reexaminations of primary sources, often link modern women with their medieval predecessors; in one noteworthy instance, Ramirez details how medieval scholar Margarete Kuhn, with the help of Caroline Walsh, the wife of a high-ranking U.S. military official, spirited the famed Reisencodex containing the collected writing of 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen out of Soviet-occupied East Germany in 1948. Throughout, Ramirez's adept scene-setting segues gracefully into deeper considerations of these women's lives and work. This feminist history fascinates. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
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"Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 51, 5 Dec. 2022, p. 116. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731123972/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0c2541c7. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
Ramirez, Janina FEMINA Hanover Square Press (NonFiction None) $29.99 2, 28 ISBN: 9781335498526
A well-documented study of several significant women of the medieval era.
Using archaeological discoveries and the objects and literature connected to these women, Ramirez, a BBC presenter and Oxford lecturer, seeks to comprehend their spheres of influence and expand their stories. Queens and abbesses, tradeswomen and artisans, monastics and mystics: The author demonstrates to a modern audience that, contrary to many traditional historical accounts, women in the Middle Ages had power, influence, and agency. "This book has focused on a handful of women who highlight specific themes--diplomacy, artistic production, warfare, literacy and leadership--at particular moments throughout the medieval period," she writes. "Every woman is a complex web of characteristics .It wasn't just rich and powerful men who built the modern world. Women have always been a part of it, as has the full range of human diversity, but we are only now beginning to see what has been hidden in plain sight." Ramirez presents an impressive array of evidence, including art, jewelry, coinage, needlework, and manuscripts. She begins each chapter with a "discovery," which run the gamut from the minuscule (discerning a new figure for King Harold on the Bayeux Tapestry) to the dramatic (stealing the "priceless" Riesencodex, by Hildegard of Bingen, from the Soviets in the aftermath of World War II). Among other interesting characters, the author introduces us to Jadwiga, crowned "king" of Poland in 1384 and now a Roman Catholic saint; and an unknown woman of African origin who was found in a Black Plague mass burial ground and whose bones, like others found nearby, "show evidence of health issues caused by living in a densely populated urban environment." Ramirez also highlights new breakthroughs in archaeology and anthropological study that have allowed researchers to uncover these hidden stories. Extensive, well-researched, and readable, this book invites us to reassess the historical record.
A great choice for any history buff.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Ramirez, Janina: FEMINA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731562334/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3ff00f4a. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
BOOK REVIEW: WAY OF THE WAVES – JANINA RAMIREZ
Roachie's ReviewsBook ReviewsAdventure, Children's fiction, MG, Middle Grade, Vikings, Way of the WavesLeave a comment
Way of the Waves
Author(s): Janina Ramirez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: Out now
Synopsis
Alva clings to her sleeping wolf as the Viking longship pitches and rolls over the North Sea’s crashing waves. Soon she will reveal herself as a secret stowaway, but only when there’s no chance of turning back.
This is her opportunity to put her sheild maiden spirit to the test – exploring strange new lands, solving mysteries, and most importantly finding her father…
TAKEN FROM WAY OF THE WAVES
Review
Ihave some fond memories of reading the precursor to this wonderful book. Riddle of the Runes is the first book of the ‘Viking Mysteries’ series by Ramirez, and also her first children’s publication. Presented with the opportunity to see Ramirez speak at Cheltenham Book Festival, I devoured Riddle of the Runes and fell in love with the protagonist, Alva, a fiery 13-year-old Viking with a wolf as a companion.
When I learned of the publication of Way of the Waves, I could not have been more excited. I didn’t even read the blurb. I just knew I wanted more of Alva’s adventures and beautiful spirit. I was not disappointed.
This second book glides effortlessly from the first and gratefully does not spend too much time explaining how we come to be at the opening point in time. I am sure it is still a wonderful story for those who have not read the first, but I would highly recommend reading Riddle of the Runes before setting sail with Alva in Way of the Waves.
Reading Way of the Waves at the beach ❤
The story is fast-paced and keeps a momentum where you never have a dull moment. There are no fears here of getting bored, there’s no opportunity for that. Ramirez does a fantastic job of weaving together the story and historical fact, so it also acts as an educational tool.
I could not recommend this book highly enough for middle-grade readers (as well as everyone else) as an insight into the world of the Vikings. It has both strong female characters and male characters whose merits are based on their wisdom, cunning, and integrity. Together with stunning illustrations by David Wyatt, it will make a perfect Summer holiday read.
A stunning follow up by Janina Ramirez; I am ready to see where Alva goes next. All I need to do now is get Janina to sign my book so I have a matching set…!
I purchased this book myself and was not asked by the publisher or author to write a review.
LITERATUREBook Review: Goddess, by Dr Janina Ramirez, illustrated by Sarah Walsh
ByVanessa EllePosted on March 8, 2022
CHILDREN’S: Tales of powerful female figures have been told since the beginning of time and this collection brings together 50 stories from around the world.
COMMENTS
AN EPIC CELEBRATION OF FEMALE POWER.
5
The world has never been short of inspiring female role models, both real and imaginary. From the dawn of time to the age of TikTok, powerful women have demonstrated traits that are too often associated with men only: strength, intelligence, influence, and ambition. Women have always been capable of these qualities, but we haven’t always had the opportunity to hear about them, or to celebrate them. Enter Goddess.
The gorgeous fluorescent pink cover houses an encyclopaedia of 50 important female figures who play a central role in the religions and cultures of the world, past and present. It touches on Abrahamic figures, like Mary and Eve, while also shining a spotlight on goddesses, spirits, and saints from many other cultures, societies, empires, and belief systems, from the Aztecs of what is now Mexico to the Yoruba religion of West Africa. Included are familiar faces, like the Greek goddess Athena, and those that many readers might not recognise, such as the Inuit Mother of the Sea, Sedna.
Each woman gets a double-page spread with details about who she is, the most important story associated with her, and most importantly, how she has shaped belief. While the information doesn’t go to great depth, it’s a sufficient introduction to these figures for children. The myths that are retold are simplified and certain details are left out, but with such an extensive catalogue of subjects to get through, this is a given. Anything else would overwhelm the target audience.
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Dr Janina Ramirez doesn’t discriminate, including those goddesses that have traditionally been viewed in a negative light, like the infamous Jewish demon Lilith or Izanami, the Japanese Goddess of Death and New Life. She casts a positive light over them, commending them for standing up to those who oppressed them, finding independence, and other acts that should be encouraged in young readers. In this way, the book highlights the positivity in things that children—especially girls—may be afraid of doing, such as displaying their strength or following their ambitions.
The book is presented flawlessly, with a satin ribbon in matching fluorescent pink and stunning illustrations by Sarah Walsh. Historic images also appear on each woman’s page, depicting either original authentic portrayals of that goddess or an artefact dating back to the time she was worshipped. For example, on Sekhmet’s page, the Egyptian Lioness and Bringer of Destruction, there is a photograph of a copper Sekhmet figurine dating back to Egypt, 664-332 BC.
Goddess is the perfect gift to give a young girl (or even an older one) when she questions her own potential. And it would leave a mark on the girl who feels held back by gender-related limitations. For any girl who thinks she can’t be as strong as the boys, or as smart, loved, or powerful, this wonderful book is a must. Though the figures here are mostly rooted in mythology, they still serve as examples of female figures that shaped the core beliefs of empires through time. Real or myth, fact or fiction, entities like Juno, Isis, Brigid and Lakshmi remind female readers that girls can indeed do anything.
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Reviewed by Vanessa Elle
Instagram: @vanessaellewrites
This review is the opinion of the reviewer and not Glam Adelaide.
Book review: The Private Lives of the Saints, by Dr. Janina Ramirez
The subtitle of this book, Power, Passion and Politics in Anglo-Saxon England, is a clue to why I was attracted to it. There is not a lot of books on Anglo-Saxons out there, and even fewer on the saints of the period. I was very glad to see that someone had tackled this subject!
Dr. Ramirez is an Oxford lecturer, BBC broadcaster, researcher, and author. Her aim in this book is to widen the stories of the Anglo-Saxon saints to encompass the times in which they lived, and to show how their influence in that tumultuous time gives us clues about the culture and society of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The book was published in 2015 by WH Allen.
Needless to say, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, so it was with great eagerness that I opened the book. I was a little afraid that Dr. Ramirez would start from the seemingly more and more popular societal view that the Christians were the source of all that is wrong in our world (ok, maybe an exaggeration but you know what i mean, don’t you?), but thankfully I did not see that bias in this book. I found it to be a fair, balanced, and ultimately fascinating view of these real people who lived so very long ago.
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I will admit to knowing nothing about Dr. Ramirez before reading this book, but I was delighted to find she is has many BBC TV specials to her name (including one on The Treasures of the Anglo Saxons) , as well as print publications both academic and mainstream. She has her PhD thesis, The Symbolic Life of Birds in Anglo-Saxon England available at her website. Cool! Plus, she does many lectures and hosts a podcast, Art Detective. Phew! Busy lady! Image from her Facebook page.
The book begins with a short but succinct description of Anglo-Saxon England. as well as an important explanation of the word, “saint”. Too often we take our modern definition of “saint” – an extra-holy person officially canonized by the Roman Catholic Church – to frame our understanding of these early saints. However, in the Anglo-Saxon period, a person was declared a saint by the common consensus of the people, which meant that pretty much anyone with influence and high status could earn this title. And even some without those qualifiers.
The lines between secular and sacred, the worldly and the otherworldly, are incredibly hard to define in the early medieval period. A king could be a saint, and a bishop could rule like a king. The idea that someone could be declared a saint simply due to popularity is something that is hard to grasp from our twenty-first century perspective.
Ramirez gives us a good example from modern times to help us understand how this worked. Princess Diana was a royal figure, who lived in the public eye, and who was known for her good deeds and kindness. Her death sparked worldwide mourning on an heretofore unseen scale. In Anglo-Saxon England, Diana would likely have beeen heralded as a saint (with the caveat that of course, a saint in the early medieval period would also have the added mantle of Christian piety attached). But her example gives us an understanding of the mixture of public status, power, and virtuous living that seized the imaginations of the Anglo-Saxons and prompted them to confer the title of “saint” on various people in their society.
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Princess Di, a modern-day saint? Image by John McIntyre on Flickr
The book looks at the important Anglo-Saxon saints in chronological order, starting with Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr in the 3rd or 4th century, and ending with Alfred the Great (died 899 AD). Along the way she covers many of the saints that I have discussed on the blog, such as Brigid, Patrick, Columba, Cuthbert, Hilda, and Bede; plus a few others that I haven’t got to yet: Alban, Gregory, Wilfrid, and Alfred.
In each chapter Dr. Ramirez gives us a thorough understanding of the times in which the person lived, and attempts to go beyond the official hagiographic account of the saint to explore what this person was really like, as well as their impact on their society. Along the way we learn fascinating details about the Anglo-Saxons and the incredible diversity of people, religion and culture that made up the mix of life at that time.
Dr. Ramirez gives us a really good principle to follow when studying the past, and it’s one that resonated with me. It is exactly this principle that has made it easier for me, as a novelist, to tackle the sometimes daunting task of bringing an era that is so far removed from our own to life:
…it is a central premise when studying the past to remember that humanity never changes beyond recognition, and regardless of the seeming differences between people past and present, basic human interests remain largely the same.
It is this connection to the humanity of these sometime plastic and daunting figures that makes The Private Lives of the Saints so interesting.
I was happy to see that my own ramblings on these subjects on the blog lined up fairly well with what Dr. Ramirez presents in her book. As I have said before, I am very much an amateur on these subjects – I’m a novelist, not an academic historian – but I have done careful research on the times and people of the Early Medieval period in order to present that era as accurately as I can in my novel.
Dr. Ramirez does take a different view of Brigid than I did, which is fair. She come down on the side of the theory that Brigid was not a real person, but her cult grew out of a Christianizing of the goddess Brigantia. I won’t quibble with her. I think there are compelling cases to be made for either view. And I would certainly not recommend you skip that chapter if you disagree with her on that, because if you did you would miss one of the highlights of the book for me. The chapter on Brigid contains a wonderful explanation of the history of monasticism and how the Celts looked to the early Desert Fathers for inspiration as they established their monasteries in extreme, harsh locations. This chapter is well-worth reading, even if you might not agree with her ultimate conclusion about Brigid.
I also loved that Ramirez included a couple of favourites of mine who are not officially names “saints” but whose influence cannot be denied, that being the Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great (I haven’t done a post on him yet, but I definitely will!). They were highly important figures not only in their day but also in our own. We owe a lot to them both, and in this book you will find out why.
I highly recommend The Private Lives of the Saints. I learned a lot, but never get bogged down in dry history. Dr. Ramirez has brought these people and the era in which they lived into bright relief. I really appreciate her careful and thorough scholarship throughout, as well as her knack of making it all so very interesting.
I give this one 5 stars. Perfect for lovers of history, especially of the Anglo-Saxon era, but really for anyone who wants to understand more about these fascinating people who have shaped the world we live in today.