Felice Lifshitz

Background

Felice Lifshitz was born on September 21, 1959, in New York City, New York, United States, to David Lifshitz, a supermarket clerk, and Belle Lifshitz, a homemaker.

Education

In 1981, Felice received a Bachelor of Arts in Medieval studies from Barnard College. From 1986 to 1987, she also attended Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France.

In 1983, Felice received a Master of Arts in History from Columbia University, a Master of Philosophy in 1984, and a Doctor of Philosophy in History in 1988.

Career

At the beginning of her career, Felice worked as an instructor in history and chair of the Committee for the Integration of Gender Issues into the Core Curriculum at Columbia University in New York. Later, she also worked as a visiting assistant professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, and then, as an assistant professor at Florida International University - Miami. She also was an associate professor of history and an affiliated associate professor of religious studies.

She also was a visiting fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and guest researcher at the University of Freiburg. Felice also was a visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt, guest researcher at Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and guest lecturer at other institutions, including the University of Utrecht, University of Vienna, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, University of Bamberg, and the University of Paderborn.

Currently, Felice is publishing (with Routledge) a collection of some of her earliest articles under the title Writing Normandy: Tales of Saints and Rulers. She has written a new article for the collection, entitled "Women and Gender in Dudo of St. Quentin's Gesta Normannorum." Currently, she is working on a second new contribution to the collection, a 24-years-after reconsideration of the issues in my "Beyond Positivism and Genre: "Hagiographical" Texts as Historical Narratives, Viator 25 (1994): 95 - 113. She also presented a draft of the new essay as a keynote to the "Comparative Hagiology" pre-conference workshop at the 2019 American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature meeting in San Diego in November 2019.

In 2017-2018, she co-curated (with Joseph F. Patrouch) an exhibition at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta, whose published catalog is available as Salt, Sword, and Crozier: Books and Coins from the Prince-Bishopric of Salzburg (c. 1500 - c. 1800). Their excavation of the Peel collection for this exhibition unearthed a number of unknown yet significant books (such as an elementary textbook of canon law) about which Felice is writing a series of articles. In addition, she has been making notes for an eventual monograph (growing out of my teaching) on the role of religion in the History of Feminism.

Felice taught a wide variety of European and comparative history courses, but now at the University of Alberta, she focuses on themes such as Feminism and Religion, Representations of Girls and Women, History of Feminist Thought, Feminism and Historical Film, and Women and Gender in the Pre-Modern World. Although she has not been able to reflect this in the formal course titles, Felice is committed to a robust inclusion of Womanist perspectives in all of these classes.

In Fall 2019, her History of Feminist Thought class (WGS 301) engaged in a "Wikipedia Improvement Project." In Winter 2020 she will teach "Religion and Violence" at the 200 level. Also, in Fall 2020 she will teach a "Gender Research Workshop" at the 500 level, and in Winter 2021 she will teach "Feminist Historiography" and "Women Theologians," both at the 400/500 levels.

Achievements

• Felice Lifshitz is known as a medieval historian now cross-appointed to Women's and Gender Studies and to Religious Studies. She has founded and, for many years, directed the Working Group for Pre-Modern Histories and Cultures at Florida International University (Miami, FL), dedicated to the comparative study of the Global Middle Ages.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture

    (Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia, a groundbre...)

    2014
  • Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives

    (In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, six histor...)

    2008
  • The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia, 627-827

    (The Name of the Saint addresses these martyrological and ...)

    2006
  • Salt, Sword, and Crozier: Books and Coins from the Prince-Bishopric of Salzburg

    (Like the popes in Rome, the Prince-Bishops of Salzburg ru...)

    2017
  • Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice

    (The word "medieval" is often used in a negative way when ...)

    2011
  • Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria 1995

Politics

Felice Lifshitz is a Democrat.

Views

The majority of Felice's published scholarship is based on and revolves around the study of surviving manuscripts from Christian communities in Medieval western and central Europe. Although many topics have interested her, two are particularly prominent: the construction and representation of the past and the histories of women and gender. She has particularly cultivated her understanding of these important fields through her teaching, where Lifshitz has been able to explore the issues in arenas far beyond the world of medieval European Christians. She says that she is happy to supervise students in medieval European Christian cultural studies but also in the study of other periods, places, and cultural communities should they wish to put gender, historical representation, or both at (or near) the center of their inquiry.

Felice previously has published extensively on medieval cultural, religious and intellectual history, with a particular focus on saint veneration practices, monastic life, and women's history.

Membership

Felice is a member of the International Center of Medieval Art, International Society for Intellectual History, Medieval Academy of America, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, Hagiography Society, American Catholic Historical Society, Haskins Society for Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking, and Angevin History, Arbeitskreis für Hagiographische Fragen.

Personality

Felice loves to travel.

Interests

• Exercise, photography, travel, singing

Connections

On May 15, 1994, Lifshitz married Joseph F. Patrouch III.

Father:

David Lifshitz

Mother:

Belle Lifshitz

Spouse:

Joseph Francis Patrouch

child:

Quinn Bellamy Lifshitz

colleague:

Joseph F. Patrouch

Born July 12, 1960

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010