Dr Julie Ann Smith

DPhil (York) BA Hons (UNE)
Lecturer
Room 821 MacCallum Building

+61 2 9351 4003

I received my BA (Hons) from the University of New England in 1990, and my doctorate from the University of York in 1994. My thesis examined the nature of queenship in early medieval France and England. I spent a year of a post-doctoral fellowship at Massey University in New Zealand before being appointed to a position in the Department of History where I lectured for eight years. I commenced my position as lecturer at Sydney University at the end of 2003.

My major research focus at present is the nunnery rules and constitutions of the 10th-15th centuries. I also research the history of women pilgrims of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in particular, relating to women’s accounts of their pilgrimages and the processes through which they constructed their identities as pilgrims.

I am working on a series of articles and preparing a monograph on the formulation of women’s monastic life through the rules and constitutions which were developed between the 10th and 15th centuries.

Ordering Women’s Lives: Penitentials and Nunnery Rules in the early Medieval West (London: Ashgate, 2001)

‘The Virtue of Stillness: Abelard and Monastic Silence’, American Benedictine Review – Forthcoming

‘Scriptam Diriges Quae Feminarum Sit Propria: a Rule for the Paraclete’, – Forthcoming

‘“What Now Lies Before Their Eyes”: The Foundations of Early Pilgrim Visuality’, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism,4 (2007) http://www.jgrchj.net/volume4

‘“My Lord’s Native Land”: Mapping the Christian Holy Land’, Church History 76:1 (2007), 1-31.

‘The Eye of Faith: Vision and Visuality in the Experience of Women Pilgrims’, Women-Church: Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion – The Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 40 (2007) 32-36.

‘Sacred Journeying: Women’s Correspondence and Pilgrimage in the 4th and 8th Centuries’ in J. Stopford Ed., Pilgrimage Explored (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 1999), 41-56.

‘The Earliest Queenmaking Rites’, Church History 66 (1997), 18-35.

• HSTY 2064 Communicating Culture in the Middle Ages
• HSTY 2065 Festival and Faith
• HSTY 3096 Worlds of Medieval Women I
• HSTY 3097 Worlds of Medieval Women II

• medieval women – individual case studies, sainthood, gender, space, pilgrimage, monasticism, mysticism, literature by/for women (e.g., devotional, guidance, letters)
• medieval men - mysticism, masculinity, monasticism
• general research areas include monasticism, saints, healthcare, pilgrimage, death & burial, devotional works.

‘“The Virtue of Stillness”’: Abelard and Monastic Silence’
International Medieval Congress
University of Leeds
Leeds, July, 2007

‘Visuality of Women Pilgrims in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages’
41st International Congress on Medieval Studies
University of Western Michigan
Kalamazoo, May, 2006

February, 2005 – ANZAMEMS Conference, ‘Old Journeys, New Journeys: Change and Continuity in Women’s Pilgrimage Accounts’

July, 2004 – Religious History Conference, ‘The Eye of Faith: Vision and Visuality in the Experience of Women Pilgrims’

‘Nunnery Rules and Enclosure in Medieval Europe’
Designing Women Conference
Auckland University English Dept, February, 2001

‘Dangerous Bodies: Women’s Sexuality and the Penitentials’
ANZAMEMS Conference
Victoria University
Wellington, February, 1998

‘Sacred Journeying: Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality and Women’s Pilgrimage, 4th and 8th centuries’
31st International Congress on Medieval Studies
University of Western Michigan
Kalamazoo, May, 1996