Jennifer Wynne Hellwarth

Title:  Professor Emerita
Department: English; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Research Fields of Interest: Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, History of Medicine, European and Arabic Magic and Medicine
Degrees: B.A., University of California, Berkeley; M.A., Stanford University; Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

Contact Info:
Email: jhellwar@allegheny.edu
Phone: (814) 332-4324
Website: Click here

Office Location: Odd Fellows 232

Publications
Books

  • Hellwarth, Jennifer. The Reproductive Unconscious in Medieval and Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 2003.*

Essays

  • Hellwarth, Jennifer. Afterword for Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England. Douglas Brooks, ed. Ashgate Press. 2005. *
  • Entry on Lucy Hutchinson. Encyclopaedia of Women’s Autobiography. Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin, eds. Greenwood Press. 2005.
  • “‘I wyl wright of prevy sekenes’: Imagining Female Literacy and Textual Communities in Medieval and Early Modern Midwifery Manuals.”Critical Survey , Summer 2002 (Vol.14, n.1), 44-63. Special Issue on Early Modern Literacies/Identities. Guest editors, Margaret W. Ferguson and Eve Sanders. *
  • “’be unto me as a precious ointment’: Lady Grace Mildmay: Sixteenth-Century Female Practitioner” in Dynamis. International Journal of the History of Science and Medicine. Special Issue on “Women and Health: Practices and Knowledges.” June 1999 (Vol.19) 95-117.
  • “Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Teaching an Interdisciplinary Course on ‘A Cultural and Evolutionary History of Sexuality’ *but were afraid to ask,” with Ron Mumme. For The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Medicine. Stephanie Hilger, ed. Palgrave 2017.
  • “Medieval Conceptions of pneuma and its Relationship to Sexuality and Sex Difference: From Arabic to European Philosophy and Practice,” in The Early History of Embodied Cognition 1740-1920: The Lebenskraft-Debate and Radical Reality in German Science, Music, and Literature. John A. McCarthy, Heather Sullivan, Stephanie Hilger, and Nicholas Saul, eds. Amsterdam & New York: Brill Publishers, 2016.

Selected Conference Papers and Readings

  • “Social Purity, Individual Transgression: Magic and Nationhood in Chretien de Troyes’ Cligés. Panel on “Purity and Transgression” session sponsored by the Societas Magica. International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, (May 2009).
  • “Floating Beauty: Magic and the Female Sexual and Saintly Body in Emaré.” Panel on “Sexy Floating Hybrid Zombies: The Women of Chaucer, Apollonius, and Emaré.” Medieval Association of the Pacific (March 2009).
  • Invited Speaker: “Sex, Salves and Matters of State in Chrétien de Troyes’ Cligés.” UC Santa Barbara Medieval Studies Interdisciplinary Colloquium: “Disciplining Texts” (February 2008)
  • “Sexual Healing: Charms, Potions, and the Female Healer Managing the Sexual Body in The Romance of Tristan and Yseut.” International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, (May 2006).
  • “materia medica/materia magica: Managing the Anglo Saxon Sexual Body through Charms, Penitentials, and the early English Apollonius of Tyre.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association (November 2004).
  • “Performing Maternities.” Seminar Participant at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference. Kathryn Moncreif and Kathryn McPherson, organizers (April 2003).
  • “Playing Pregnancy: Social Practices and the Dramatic Representation of Childbirth in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.” UCSB Early Modern Center Conference: “Bodies, Bawdies, and Nobodies”: Early Modern Women, 1500-1800 (February 2003).
  • “Imagining Female Textual Communities: Medical Literacy and Social Class in Medieval Midwifery Manuals,” International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 2002).
  • “Let your loines be girt about, and your lampes burn clearly”: Imagining Female Literacy and Textual Communities in Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrones,” Renaissance Society of America and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Joint Annual Meeting (April 2002).
  • Literacies/Identities in Early Modern England. Workshop at the Shakespeare Association of America. Eve Sanders and Margaret Ferguson, organizers (April 2001).

Awards

  • Teacher-Scholar Professorship of the Humanities. (2009)
  • Thoburn Foundation Teaching Award. (2005)