Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: A feminist take on medieval history

13/05/2020

A feminist take on medieval history

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, A feminist take on medieval history

How does Chaucer write on rape and consent? What links Kim Kardashian and Margery Kempe?

Shahidha Bari looks at new research with Alicia Spencer-Hall, Elizabeth Robertson and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes and at the parallels between medieval times and now.

How does Chaucer write about rape and consent? What links Kim Kardashian West and Margery Kempe, the English Christian mystic and mother of 14 who wrote about her religious visions? Alicia Spencer-Hall, Elizabeth Robertson and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes join Shahidha Bari for a conversation about research and what a feminist take brings to our understanding of the medieval period.

Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Language, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary, University of London and the author of Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience 
Elizabeth Robertson is Professor at the University of Glasgow and the author of Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience and, with Christine M. Rose, the editor of Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. 
Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at City University, London. She is working on a book called Transforming Waters in Medieval Devotional Literature.

This programme was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council which funds research into the humanities and works with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.  You can find more conversations about New Research on this playlist on the Free Thinking programme website where they are all available to download as episodes of the Arts & Ideas podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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A feminist take on medieval history

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