Medieval Goes Modern
By Nicole St. Pierre
With her short spiky hair and modern clothes, USC College history professor Lisa Bitel is a sharp contrast to the medieval women she studies. Her style is also revealed in her office, which holds an eclectic mix of knickknacks. On one bookshelf sits her beloved nun collection, complete with a salt-and-pepper shaker set. On the wall hangs an ornate map of early Ireland that her husband recently gave to her. A collection of Barbie dolls is scattered around the office.
“Barbie inspired my feminism,” jokes the historian who studies the role women played in medieval Europe. “Some people have problems with Barbie-style feminism, with all the emphasis on makeup and fashion. To me, she also represents a unique kind of empowerment.”
Since this Harvard-trained historian and mother of two joined USC College two years ago, her presence has inspired students, while raising the department’s prominence in medieval research and gender studies—a subject Bitel has studied for more than 20 years. Her innovative collaborations and focused use of multimedia have raised the bar in the history department.
In USC College corridors, the word “matrix” often follows her name. It means inspiration in Latin. But Matrix is also the name of Bitel’s prize research project—an intricately designed Web site that features hundreds of illuminated manuscripts, vibrantly colored images and ancient documents dating from 400 to 1600.
Matrix is among the first Web sites to document the participation of Christian women in the religious society of medieval Europe. “These women lived extraordinary lives for their time,” Bitel says. “They were literate, participated in the community, worked alongside men and were part of major religious endeavors.”
Bitel has collaborated on Matrix since 1994 with historians at Yale University, Boston College, Hartwick College and the University of Kansas, where she directed the women’s studies program before joining USC. The project is funded by the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Yale University, Mount Holyoke College, Boston College, the University of Kansas and USC. Katherine Gill at the Hill Manuscript Library co-edits the site with Bitel.
The Figurae, which is a collection of images that comprise an intricate visual library, is the hallmark of the site (http://matrix.bc.edu). It includes hundreds of illuminated gold and silver manuscripts and unusual artwork. “In a very beautiful way, they document how women worked, prayed and formed communities,” says Bitel, who collaborates with scholars in Europe and around the globe to obtain such hard-to-find pieces.
The Monasticon is the focus of the Matrix project. It features 2,600 community profiles of the ecclesiastical and lay institutions women built and ran, such as hospitals, congregations, asylums and house churches. Another section of the site, the Cartularium, contains age-old documents including foundation charters, testaments, contracts, papal letters and other records from medieval religious communities. The databases are a powerful draw for Medievalists, who up until a few years ago had no centralized digital resource to supplement gender-focused research.
“Most people have a very narrow view of women’s role in the Middle Ages,” says Bitel. “We hope to help scholars and students to a more complex understanding of women in the past.”
Bitel spends hours in the College’s multimedia history lab translating research about women’s religious communities, using resources ranging from dusty 1960s-era punch cards to easily searchable Web archives.
Bitel, a self-proclaimed feminist since high school, developed an affinity for early Irish history while studying at Smith College and taking classes at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s. “Smith girls took classes at UMass to meet men. I didn’t get a date, but I found another passion,” she says. For three years at Smith, Bitel participated in a Rockefeller Foundation project as an undergraduate research assistant, working alongside major feminist thinkers.
Today, Bitel devotes her career to researching Irish saints, dreams, cursing rituals, sex and sexuality, women and gender ideologies.
“But what I really love to do is teach,” admits the suburban Michigan native. This uninhibited enthusiasm explains why her undergraduate course From Goddesses to Witches: Women in Premodern Europe fills up fast each semester.
Colleagues are equally quick to define Bitel’s passion as the reason for her success. One of those colleagues is her husband, Peter Mancall, a USC colonial American history professor who heads up an important new collaboration between USC and the Huntington Library.
“I tell Lisa we could write a book together if she would come 500 years forward and I would go back in time 500 years,” says Mancall, who courted Bitel while they were getting their Ph.D.s at Harvard. “When we married, we promised to love, honor and edit one another,” he laughs.
The couple taught at the University of Kansas for 12 years before being recruited by USC. “I love the civilization of Los Angeles as opposed to rural Kansas,” she says. “It didn’t take me long to become a complete Trojan convert.”
Bitel is currently working on a project with the USC School of Architecture to document a 1500s-era convent in Ferrara, Italy, and is collaborating with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture to share digital photographs of religious orders.
|
