University of Calgary

Jacqueline Jenkins

  • Professor

Office Hours

MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday
3:30p‑4:30p
During Block Week 2021 or by appointment
3:30p‑4:30p
During Block Week 2021 or by appointment
3:30p‑4:30p
During Block Week 2021 or by appointment
3:30p‑4:30p
During Block Week 2021 or by appointment
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Professional Description

Professional Description

My research and teaching interests include medieval performance and dramatic productions; women's literacy, and the patronage, production and transmission of manuscripts in the late Middle Ages; vernacular devotional literature and lay spirituality and devotional practices. I work, as well, in the broader areas of performance studies, hagiography (the study of saints' legends and the practical aspects of saints' cults), Middle English mysticism, and my critical approach is informed by cultural and material studies, feminism and gender studies. I am currently working on several projects related to medieval performance, and have been developing a critical methodology that combines medieval manuscript studies and contemporary performance studies. My research on performance and my classes on medieval drama regularly employ performance workshops as part of the critical inquiry. In July 2016, I produced and directed a performance based on my research at Durham Castle (Durham, UK) as part of the performance program for SITM (International Society for Medieval Theatre/Société Internationale pour l'étude du theatre medieval). The larger project on medieval performance, Practice-based Research, and medieval manuscripts has been supported by SSHRC and by the University of Calgary Research Grants Committee.

I am also engaged in a number of smaller projects focused on medieval literature, especially issues of women's literacy and the production and transmision of manuscripts in the later Middle Ages. for instance, I am working on an article-length study of textual evidence for the intellectual community that supported Julian of Norwich as she revised and expanded her Revelation of Love. I am also working on an article-length study that considers scribal ambition in The Book of Margery Kempe. The intersections and connections between Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe--contemporaries, visionaries, authors, and neighbours--is of particular interest to me.

I teach and supervise across the field of medieval literature, and have taught graduate courses on medieval drama and performance, on Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, on Middle English literary theories, and on medieval mystical and visionary writing. Recent supervisions have focused on medieval dramatic texts, performance studies, the York cycle of biblical plays, manuscript studies, women's devotional practices, visionary writing. If you are interested in discussing potential honours or graduate projects with me, I invite you to contact me directly at jenkinsj@ucalgary.ca.


Recent Graduate Supervisions:

"Saints' Feasts in Late Medieval England: Popular Performance and Festivity as Community Devotional Practice: (MA in-progress)

"The City Speaks: Site-Specificity and Performance in the York Corpus Christi Play" (MA 2011)

"Enacting the Corpus Christi in Late Medieval English Drama" (PhD 2011)

"Theatre of the Mind: Devotional Performance in British Library MS Stowe 39" (MA 2011)

"Vernacular Liminality in the Ancrene Wisse Group: (MA 2009)

"Images of Parental Nurturing in Middle English Conduct Books and Contemplative Writing" (MA 2007)

"Representation of Continental Mysticism in BL MS Additional 37790: Mystical Union's Relationship with Courtly Love" (MA 2005)

"A sorte treatyse of contemplacyon': The Book of Margery Kempe in Early Print Culture" (MA 2004)

"'my spowse most specyally': Late Medieval Mystical Unions and the Morality Play Wisdom" (MA 2004)

Recent Honours Supervision:

"Consuming Bodies: Meat, Martyrdom, and Community in Popular English Hagiography" (2013)

"The Cell as Locus of Simulation: Divine Contemplation, Medieval Women and Inatability in Postmodern Conceptions of the Anchorhold" (2009)

"Entangled in Words: Negative Discourse in The Cloud of Unknowing and Jacques Derrida's 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials'" (2008)

"Vernacularity and Textual Constructions of Women's Spirituality in Late Medieval England" (2007)

"Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls: Orthodox Vernacular Writer or Dangerously Powerful Heretic?" (2003)

"'Under the fote of a Woman'" The life of St Margaret of Antioch as Proto-Feminist Discourse" (2003)

Publications

Book Chapter

Degrees

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