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WORK TITLE: From She-Wolf to Martyr
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https://www.binghamton.edu/history/people/faculty/casteen.html * http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/690366
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1979.
EDUCATION:Northwestern University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. State University of New York, Binghamton, associate professor.
AWARDS:Fellowships from organizations, including the American Association of University Women and the Fulbright Foundation.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including Mediaevalia, Franciscana, and the Journal of the Historical Society. Contributor of chapters to books, including Reconsidering Boccaccio.
SIDELIGHTS
Elizabeth Casteen is a writer and educator. She is an associate professor at the State University of New York, Binghamton. Casteen has written articles that have appeared in publications, including Mediaevalia, Franciscana, and the Journal of the Historical Society. She has also written chapters of books, including Reconsidering Boccaccio.
In 2015, Casteen released her first book, From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples. In this volume, she profiles the European royal, who was in power in Naples for forty years during the fourteenth century. Johanna I was born in 1343 and died in 1382. Casteen begins by addressing the rumors surrounding the life of Johanna I. She explains that her detractors described her as lustful and greedy. Some even accused her of killing Andrew of Hungary, her first husband. However, her supporters thought of her as a victim of public criticism, a good mother, and a good Catholic. Casteen attempts to determine which was the real Johanna I.
She identifies some of her detractors, which included female saints. Casteen notes that Johanna presented herself as being close with members of the Catholic Church. She aligned herself with certain saints and gave generously to the church. Johanna also thought of herself as the pope’s obedient daughter. Casteen comments on beliefs regarding femininity during the medieval era, when Johanna lived. During that period, women were criticized for being irrational, weak, and lustful. Casteen notes that these are the characteristics Johanna’s detractors used to describe her. Positive feminine qualities included humility and piety, which Johanna used to describe herself. Casteen discusses Johanna’s involvement in the Western Schism, when two popes vied for legitimacy. Johanna initially supported Urban VI, the pope in Rome, but she later began favoring Clement VII, who was based in Avignon, France. Her shifting allegiance caused many of her friends to think poorly of her. Regarding the book’s title, Casteen explains that Boccaccio used the term she-wolf in reference to Johanna I.
Janna Bianchini, critic in the Catholic Historical Review, offered a favorable assessment of From She-Wolf to Martyr. Bianchini suggested: “Perhaps the book’s most valuable contribution is in its sensitive handling of medieval preconceptions about femininity.” Bianchini concluded: “It is a testament to Casteen’s thorough and evenhanded scholarship that the reader is left not only convinced of the equal legitimacy of these two depictions but also unsurprised by their coexistence.” “Through a careful analysis … Casteen … makes an intriguing contribution to recent scholarly discussions of medieval queenship,” asserted J.M. Pope, contributor to Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Catholic Historical Review, autumn, 2016, Janna Bianchini, review of From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples, p. 832.
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 2016, J.M. Pope, review of From She-Wolf to Martyr, p. 1228.
ONLINE
State University of New York, Binghamton Web site, https://www.binghamton.edu/ (March 28, 2017), author faculty profile.
LC control no.: no2015047357
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Casteen, Elizabeth, 1979-
Birth date: 1979
Affiliation: State University of New York at Binghamton
Profession or occupation:
Historians
Found in: From she-wolf to martyr, 2015: ECIP title page (Elizabeth
Casteen) data view (birth date, 1979)
Binghamton University WWW site, viewed April 9, 2015
(Elizabeth Casteen, assistant professor, medieval
Europe, gender, cultural/religious history)
Associated language:
eng
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
Elizabeth Casteen
Associate Professor, Medieval Europe, Gender, Cultural/Religious History
PhD, Northwestern University
Office: LT 702
Phone: (607) 777-4414
E-mail: ecasteen@binghamton.edu
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
My research focuses on gender, culture, and religion in high- and late-medieval Europe. I am particularly interested in medieval cultural constructions of gender, an interest that has led me to research and teach topics as seemingly disparate as medieval medicine, prophecy, and law. I teach courses that look broadly at European culture during the Middle Ages, with a particular emphasis on gender and religion.
My first book, From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples (Cornell University Press, 2015), examines the strategies Johanna I of Naples (r. 1343 – 1382)—easily one of the most (in)famous women in Europe during her reign—used to define herself as a woman and ruler, contrasting the reputation she crafted for herself with competing reputations shaped for her by others in media like letters, chronicles, poetry, and prophetic literature. I analyze Johanna's reputation to reveal how medieval commentators understood both femininity and monarchy and how those understandings worked together to construct gendered reputations for Johanna that were strikingly diverse and frequently in direct contradiction to one another. The concept of sovereignty was unstable during the later medieval period, and Johanna's complex public persona and problematic reputation as one of Europe's first truly sovereign queens serves as an ideal lens through which to investigate shifting, fluid, often contradictory attitudes regarding gender, sexuality, queenship, and sovereignty in the later Middle Ages. My new project, which probes the cultural and legal contours of raptus (which encompassed rape, abduction, theft, seizure, and rapture) in the high and late Middle Ages, takes up many of the same themes, but also looks at the development of medieval law, a growing interest of mine.
RECENT OR CURRENT UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
Early Medieval Europe, 300 – 1000
Later Medieval Europe, 1000 – 1400
Sex and Society in Europe, 1100 – 1400
The Crusades
Women, Gender, and Spirituality in Medieval Europe
Perspectives on the Body in Medieval Europe
The Problem of Evil in Medieval Europe
Women and Fame in Medieval Europe
RECENT OR CURRENT GRADUATE COURSES
Medieval Heresy and Religious Dissent
Gender and Authority in Medieval Europe
Colloquium in Medieval History
Sex and Gender in Premodern Europe
PUBLICATIONS
From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples (Cornell University Press, 2015)
"Gilding the Lily: John of Rupescissa's Prophetic System and the Decline of the Angevins of Naples." Mediaevalia 36, special issue, "Medieval Futures", guest editor, Marilynn Desmond (2016 forthcoming)
"On She-Wolves and Famous Women: Boccaccio, Politics, and the Neapolitan Court," in Olivia Holmes and Dana Stewart, eds., Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming)
"Sex and Politics in Naples: The Regnant Queenship of Johanna I of Naples, 1343 – 1382." Journal of the Historical Society XI (June 2011): 183 – 210.
"John of Rupescissa's Letter Reverendissime pater (1350) in the Aftermath of the Black Death." Franciscana VI (2004): 139 – 184.
CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS
Chair and Organizer, “New Perspectives on Medieval Women’s Patronage: Manuscripts, Power, and Materiality,” The Premodern Book in a Global Context: Materiality and Visuality, Binghamton, New York (October 2016, upcoming)
“Making Sense out of Chaos: Johanna I of Naples and the Cultural Imaginary of the Western Schism,” invited lecture, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (April 2016)
"The Political Uses of Friendship: Gender, Self-Presentation, and Reputation in the Fourteenth Century," invited lecture, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS), Binghamton, New York (November 2013)
"On She-Wolves and Famous Women: Boccaccio, Politics, and the Neapolitan Court," Boccaccio at 700: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, Binghamton, New York (April 2013)
"Slandering the Queen: Fama, Infamy, and the Sovereign Legitimacy of Johanna I of Naples," Annual Meeting, Medieval Academy of America, Knoxville, Tennessee (April 2013)
"An 'Especially Good Friend' to Saints: The Reputational Redemption of Johanna I of Naples (c. 1365 – 1378)," Newberry Intellectual History Seminar, Chicago, Illinois (Nov. 2010)
"Narrating Chaos: Chronicle Descriptions of Johanna I of Naples' Role in the Great Schism (c. 1378 – 1400)," Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium, Cambridge, United Kingdom (July 2010)
"Gilded Lilies: The Angevins of Naples in John of Rupescissa's Prophetic System," The Making of Prophecy: Methods of Rewriting – Rewriting of Methods (international workshop), Prague, Czech Republic (July 2010)
"Filia Peramantissima: Filial Piety, Saintly Friendship, and the Apogee of Johanna I of Naples," California Medieval History Seminar, San Marino, California (Feb. 2009)
"Johanna I of Naples and Fourteenth-Century Queenship," Sewanee Medieval Colloquium on Power in the Middle Ages, Sewanee, Tennessee (April 2006)
Participant, Seminario di Formazione in Storia Religiosa e Studi Francescani (secoli XIII – XV), organized by the Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (SISF), Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, Italy (July 2005)
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2010, Harold Perkin Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation in History, Northwestern University
2007 – 2008, American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Fellowship
2006 – 2007, Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation research in France
QUOTED: "Perhaps the book's most valuable contribution is in its sensitive handling of medieval preconceptions about femininity."
"It is a testament to Casteen's thorough and evenhanded scholarship that the reader is left not only convinced of the equal legitimacy of these two depictions but also unsurprised by their coexistence."
From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples
Janna Bianchini
102.4 (Autumn 2016): p832.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Catholic University of America Press
http://cuapress.cua.edu/journals.htm
From She- Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples. By Elizabeth Casteen. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2015. Pp. xvi, 296. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8014-5386-1.)
Johanna I of Naples (r. 1343-82) is one of medieval Europe's infrequent queens regnant, women who inherited a throne in their own right. Her reign presents a paradox: at nearly forty years, it represents an obvious case of successful female rule. Yet it was also the subject of scurrilous gossip among contemporaries who accused her of avarice, insatiable lust, and even the murder of her first husband (Andrew of Hungary). That depiction of Johanna has continued to dominate scholarly discourse about her, and Casteen's book offers an important corrective.
As Casteen explains at the outset, "This is not a biography of a woman but of a reputation" (p. 26). Although she marshals an impressive array of primary and secondary sources to elucidate the details of Johanna's life, her real concern is with fama and the performance of public identity. Casteen shows how Johanna herself, her allies, and her opponents all sought to use public opinion about her in their own interests, playing on stereotypes and changing their tactics to adapt to rapidly shifting circumstances.
Perhaps the book's most valuable contribution is in its sensitive handling of medieval preconceptions about femininity. Johanna's opponents made abundant use of negative tropes about women--their irrationality, their lust, their physical and moral weakness--to discredit her claim to authority. But Casteen also explores how Johanna and her partisans manipulated more positive constructions of femininity--such as piety, humility, and obedience--as a means to promote her power while seeming, rhetorically, to limit it. For example, Johanna assiduously portrayed herself as a loving and dutiful daughter of the pope. In doing so, she subsumed her own authority beneath his and paradoxically gained greater freedom of action insofar as she claimed to act on the pope's behalf rather than her own.
This stratagem, although successful, could not survive Johanna's entanglement in the Western Schism, when she shifted her allegiance from the Roman pope, Urban VI, to the Avignon pope, Clement VII. The decision turned many former friends and allies, including St. Catherine of Siena, against her and sparked new rounds of invective. Casteen analyzes the Clementist and Urbanist portrayals of Johanna, focusing on the use of rhetoric and reputation as weapons. The queen's allies and adversaries both "[sought] explanations for her behavior in the glories or flaws of her sex" (p. 248). Their depictions of Johanna thus serve as a sort of referendum on the "woman question" in general, and on women in power more specifically. However, Casteen's attention remains on rhetorical approaches to queenship rather than queenship in practice. So, for example, although she makes valuable observations about Johanna's relationship to each of her four husbands, there is no place here for an in-depth study of the king consort's role. Casteen expresses her own hope that other studies will take up such questions in the future.
The book concludes by contrasting Johanna's posthumous reputation in Naples as a "she-wolf' (to use Boccaccio's term) with her legacy in Provence, another part of her domains, where she was remembered as a pious, almost saintly, maternal figure. It is a testament to Casteen's thorough and evenhanded scholarship that the reader is left not only convinced of the equal legitimacy of these two depictions but also unsurprised by their coexistence.
JANNA BIANCHINI
University of Maryland-College Park
Bianchini, Janna
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bianchini, Janna. "From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples." The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 102, no. 4, 2016, p. 832+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474548724&it=r&asid=665f7c22690ac24efbb554e053ac9060. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.
QUOTED: "Through a careful analysis ... Casteen ... makes an intriguing contribution to recent scholarly discussions of medieval queenship."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474548724
Casteen, Elizabeth. From she-wolf to martyr: the reign and disputed reputation of Johanna I of Naples
J.M. Pope
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1228.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Casteen, Elizabeth. From she-wolf to martyr: the reign and disputed reputation of Johanna I of Naples. Cornell, 2015. 296p bibl index afp ISBN 9780801453861 cloth, $49.95; ISBN 9781501701009 ebook, contact publisher for price
53-3676
DG847
2015-14131 CIP
Through a careful analysis of extensive archival, manuscript, and secondary sources, Casteen (Binghamton Univ.-SUNY) makes an intriguing contribution to recent scholarly discussions of medieval queenship, the creation of reputations, "cultural imaginary," and the reliability of narrative sources. The author traces Johanna I of Naples's shifting public image throughout her reign as she was lambasted by her enemies, marginalized by one husband, criticized by female saints, and lauded by her allies, an image always cast in gendered terms. Johanna was a lascivious, murderous usurper or a pious, motherly victim, depending on the source. When she could, Johanna portrayed herself as the obedient papal daughter, generous patron of the Church, and friend of prominent saints. Through this juxtaposition of diametrically opposed reputations, Casteen cogently argues that reputation can be more important than reality; she also highlights the difficulties in using narrative sources. Moreover, she calls for the rehabilitation of Johanna's reputation as a queen and woman, a position that occasionally leads Casteen to overargue her case, as when she downplays Birgitta of Sweden's damning visions of Johanna. Despite this minor caveat, this important work is valuable to scholars and students alike. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--J. M. Pope, Hiram College
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pope, J.M. "Casteen, Elizabeth. From she-wolf to martyr: the reign and disputed reputation of Johanna I of Naples." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1228. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661807&it=r&asid=079e98f814ef9009a1c3100db52b35c7. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661807