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Researcher

Patricia Stoop

  • Research Expertise:Patricia Stoop is teaching Historical Dutch Literature in the Department of Literature at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). She held the prestigious Visiting Brueghel Chair in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania (2014 and 2018) and she was an assistant professor of Medieval Dutch Literature at the University of Utrecht (2015–16). She holds a propedeutic degree in Greek and Latin (Nijmegen, 1993), and a doctoral degree in Dutch Literature and Languages (Nijmegen, 1997). She received her PhD in Literature at the Universiteit Antwerpen (2009). Her published dissertation Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse klooster Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456–1510) involved the study of the fifteenth-century vernacular convent sermons from the Brussels convent of Jericho and their literary and historical context. As a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) she studied female authorship and authority in late medieval and early modern vernacular sermons from the Low Countries (2010–13). Additionally, she is one of the initiators of the international and interdisciplinary project Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe (in collaboration with Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Veronica O’Mara, University of Hull. The three edited volumes have been published by Brepols publishers (2013, 2015, and 2017). Her new book project, Communities of Women's Learning in the Low Countries, c. 1350-1600, uses sermon collections and library collections to explore the scope of women's knowledge, the literary means they used to express it, and the cultural and social field in which they functioned. Furthermore, she is developing a digital database that will eventually contain all vernacular and Latin manuscripts from the Low Countries that show women's involvement in the period between c. 1250 and 1600. The project, which relies heavily on material data in the sources, is the first of its kind and can serve as a pilot project for other regions in Europe. It goes without saying that the focus on religious women and the study of sermons implies a great familiarity with the broader male-led literary and religious culture. After all, both domains cannot be studied in isolation from the important male influences and authors of that period. In addition, she is working on three edited volumes: Commercial Book Production? Writing for Third Parties. Turnhout: Brepols, [2020-] (Texts and Transitions Series); Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Catholic Europe: Preachers and Preaching Across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550), ed. by Veronica O'Mara and Patricia Stoop. Turnhout: Brepols, [2020-] (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching), and Spiritual Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries, essays by Thom Mertens, edited, translated, and introduced by John Arblaster, Veerle Fraeters, Kees Schepers, and Patricia Stoop. With and introduction by John van Engen (Turnhout: Brepols, [2020-]). She has been teaching on a broad range of topics in the field of medieval and early modern culture and literature. Her main areas of interest include: women writers, female authorship, literacy and learning, participation by women in the intellectual, religious, cultural and literary field of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, intellectual networks, memoria (both as a rhetorical tool and as an instrument for the commemoration of the dead), commercial book production, and sermon studies.
  • Keywords:WOMENS HISTORY, CODICOLOGY, WOMEN WRITERS, RELIGIOUS CULTURE, GENDER STUDIES, HISTORY OF (RELIGIOUS) CULTURE, HISTORY OF LITERATURE, HISTORY OF BOOKS, Language and literature (incl. information, documentation, library and archive sciences)
  • Disciplines:Literary studies, Other languages and literary studies, Theology and religious studies, Study of regions
  • Research techniques:My teaching and research are situated at the intersections of literary history, cultural history, book history, and monastic history, women's and gender studies, and religious studies. In addition, I have a solid expertise in the book-historical auxiliary sciences of codicology, palaeography and editing.
  • Users of research expertise:Academic education Secondary education Culture sector Historians Archive services (Heritage) libraries