Dana Wessell Lightfoot | University of Northern British Columbia (original) (raw)

Books by Dana Wessell Lightfoot

Teaching Documents by Dana Wessell Lightfoot

The history of witchcraft and the witchcraze is a topic that has fascinated students, historians,... more The history of witchcraft and the witchcraze is a topic that has fascinated students, historians, and the general public for centuries. With this fascination, however, has come certain distortions of the past, creating many different versions of the events which took place in Early Modern Europe. This course investigates the concept of witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and the origins, evolution and decline of the witch hunts which took place from the 13th to the 18th centuries. The course will start by considering ideas about witchcraft from the foundation of medieval superstitious beliefs and practices, exploring in particular, the idea of demons and demonology. We will also consider how witchcraft was conceived of within folklore in the early modern period, focusing on the idea of witch familiars. We will then turn to consider how these beliefs came to be seen as a basis for witchcraft as a crime, within both secular and religious legal contexts. Across Europe, approximately 80% of those accused of witchcraft were women, so we will spend a class thinking about the impact of gender on perceptions of witches and those actually tried for the crime. In order to see how all of these concepts worked in practice, we will next explore examples of witch hunts in five distinct geographical regions: Germany, England, Italy, Russia, and the New England colony of Salem. Format This course is a seminar and it is therefore based on discussion. Attendance is mandatory, as is participation in class discussion. All students are required to do the assigned readings before each class so that they are fully prepared to participate. If you do not do the readings, you are disrespecting your fellow students who worked hard to prepare. In preparation for class, students will sign up for roles for THREE Academic Reading Circles over the course of the semester. Each Academic Reading Circle (ARC) is focused on a topic we are covering for that week. In that role, you will help lead off our discussion for that topic based on the readings that were covered, both ONLINE and IN CLASS. Please see the handout "Academic Reading Circle Preparation" for more information.

The aim of this course is to explore some of the ways that historians have thought about the prac... more The aim of this course is to explore some of the ways that historians have thought about the practice of history in the modern period. To that end, our course will focus on the Annales School (movement/paradigm etc.), its successors and its critics. More so than any other theoretical/methodological framework, the Annales School has influenced the practice of history during the course of the 20 th century. Begun in France in the early 20 th century as a reaction to historiographical trends of the 19 th century, the Annales scholars desired to ask new questions of the past with methodologies often borrowed from other disciplines. Our class will begin with an overview of the Annales School and then turn to look at the work of some of its key figures (Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel). We'll then explore those considered part of the "third wave" of Annales (Emmauel Le Roy Ladurie and Carlo Ginzburg). The second part of our class will consider the successors and critics, including feminist historians, Michel Foucault, New Historicism, and Postmodernism. We'll end with a recent book by someone who encapsulates many of the divergent aspects of the Annales, its successors and critics: Natalie Zemon Davis.

Office hours: Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. or by appt.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to the history of women in Western Europe from the lat... more The aim of this course is to introduce you to the history of women in Western Europe from the late medieval period to the early nineteenth century. We will be looking at the experiences of European women over this time period from a number of different lenses such as medical and religious ideas, marriage and the law, work, education and learning, religion, political ideas, feminism, witchcraft, sexuality; and marginality.

Office hours: Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Papers by Dana Wessell Lightfoot

Aquest article tracta de les experiències de jueves i converses a la ciutat de Girona desp... more Aquest article tracta de les experiències de jueves i converses a la ciutat de Girona després de la tràgica violència del 1391 i fins a les crisis a què es va enfrontar la comunitat durant i després de la disputa de Tortosa. Centrant-se en el matrimoni, la família i l’activitat econòmica en el mercat del crèdit, advoca per la importància de considerar aquests esdeveniments des de la perspectiva de les dones com un mitjà per a matisar i aprofundir la nostra comprensió de llur impacte, d’una manera més àmplia, en les comunitats jueves catalanes. També emfatitzem la necessitat de considerar les experiències de les dones jueves i converses paral·lelament amb les dones cristianes de Catalunya, subratllant llurs experiències comunes en una societat patriarcal sotmesa a la crisi dels últims segles de la baixa edat mitjana.Paraules clau: jueves, do...

Medieval People: Social Bonds, Kinship, and Networks

This article explores how our work as collaborative historians has allowed us to map out the stor... more This article explores how our work as collaborative historians has allowed us to map out the stories of Jewish families in Girona during the early decades of the fifteenth century - a crucial moment in their history - by pulling together documents from royal, municipal, and notarial archives. Here we focus on the Vidal family--Caravida, his first wife Bonafilla, and second wife Regina, analyzing hundreds of records to tell a tale of polygamy, accusations of theft, the death of a son, conversion to Christianity, divorce, a mixed marriage, and investigation and conviction by the inquisition. Interwoven with our narrative of the Vidals, we discuss some of the tools that have helped us bring together such varied sources. Making all this possible is our use of a relational database which has aided our ability to link together such rich documentation from a variety of archives. Finally, we also consider the role of happenstance in our examination of certain archival sources; specifically,...

Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, 2020

On 27 September 1391, a woman named Tolrana stood on the steps of the Gironella tower in Girona a... more On 27 September 1391, a woman named Tolrana stood on the steps of the Gironella tower in Girona and, before Christian officials and her own Jewish representatives, refused to convert to Christianity or to remain married to her husband Francesc, who had converted during the recent attacks against the Jewish community. Almost thirty years later, in February 1419, the minor orphan Tolrana Benet appealed to King Alfons because she wanted to convert to Christianity but was being prevented by her Jewish guardians. She proposed to the king that she be put under the guardianship of her converso uncle, Lluis de Cardona. We do not know why the first Tolrana decided to end her marriage rather than convert, nor why the young Tolrana resisted familial pressures to remain Jewish. Yet both examples illustrate ways in which Jewish women exercised agency as a means of determining their own lives. This article focuses on the experiences of women to consider the intersection of agency and religious co...

Early Modern Women, 2018

Collaborative Research in Late Medieval Gender and Jewish History records, almost a dozen royal l... more Collaborative Research in Late Medieval Gender and Jewish History records, almost a dozen royal letters, and a handful of municipal documents we have uncovered in various local and royal archives in Girona and Barcelona that involve Blanca de Banyoles' s activities in the last decade of the fourteenth century. Together these documents tell the story of a woman who moved from marriage to motherhood to widowhood to remarriage, who managed the sizeable assets of her infant son with pragmatism and shrewdness, who faced challenges from familial and business groups, all the while negotiating the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity. Blanca is just one of the many women whom we have tracked through the notarial records of Girona in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries as part of a collaborative project on Jewish women and conversas in late medieval Catalonia. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, this project makes extensive use of the rich notarial and municipal archives of Girona, while also digging into the royal letters of this period, located in the Arxiu de Corona de Aragon in Barcelona. A key factor in the success of this project has been its collaborative nature: that two scholars are working together to research and write about this material, using a methodology that is still unusual in the discipline of history. In this article, we would like to propose collaborative research as a methodology for the study of medieval and early modern women' s and gender history. We argue that it can open up new avenues of research and expand the discipline in new directions. Working collaboratively has allowed us not only to bring different perspectives to our research and tackle topics neither of us would have approached alone, but it has also permitted us to cover a wider and deeper range of documentation. As collaborators we can move between the distinct paleographic and diplomatic structures of various archives, as well as the different historiographic fields that our project encompasses. A Jewish woman who converted to Christianity in a transformative period in medieval Spanish history, Blanca held many identities: she was a daughter, wife, mother, and widow; Jew and Christian (conversa); and was subject to royal, municipal, and religious authorities. Being able to combine expertise in Christian and Jewish history, feminist scholarship, gender history, and social history, our collaboration has allowed us to tell a complex story like that of Blanca de Banyoles with a more intersectional understanding of Blanca and the Jewish and conversa women of her community and to offer a more nuanced examination of the choices that women in premodern Europe made around family, economic activities, marriage, and religion.

Office hours: Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. or by appt.

Office hours: Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Medieval People: Social Bonds, Kinship, and Networks

Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, 2020

Early Modern Women, 2018

escape as he, together with his trial record, were being transported to A Coruña where an appella... more escape as he, together with his trial record, were being transported to A Coruña where an appellate tribunal was scheduled to review his case. In as much as Spanish law stipulated that fugitives could still be tried in absentia (en rebeldía), the prosecuting attorney sought to continue the proceedings, but the judges determined otherwise and abandoned the case after the records of Soller’s trial went astray. Moore deserves thanks for their rediscovery. In addition to his insightful gloss on Soller’s eventful life, he reproduces the transcript, in both Spanish and English translation, in an appendix. It is now also available online, for readers interested in consulting the original.

Viator, 2009

... See Caroline Castiglione, Adversarial Literacy: How Peasant Politics Influenced Noble Govern... more ... See Caroline Castiglione, Adversarial Literacy: How Peasant Politics Influenced Noble Governing of the Roman Countryside during Page 4. ... Ironwork and leatherwork were also predominant trades with numerous shield makers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, cob-blers, and ...

Marriage in fifteenth-century Valencia, 2013

Although Jewish authorities argued that women should preserve their privacy and modesty at all ti... more Although Jewish authorities argued that women should preserve their privacy and modesty at all times Jewish women throughout the medieval world played an active role in the economic life of their families. In many cases, these roles were closely linked to important shifts in the credit market. Based on notarial records from the city of Girona between 1380-1416, this paper will focus on the participation of Jewish women in a increasingly competitive market during a time of growing debt and fiscal pressure. Widows and the role of procurators will be of special focus.