Research Interests
- Medieval and early modern literature and culture
- Female spirituality
- Transnational approaches to literature, especially England, France, and Spain
- Intersections of gender, religion, and nationality
Research Areas
- Transnational Literatures
- Early Modern Studies
- Medieval Studies
- Religion
- Gender and Sexuality
- Comparative Literature
Educational Background
- Ph.D., Indiana University, 1997
- M.A., Indiana University, 1992
- B.A., Vanderbilt University, 1991
Awards & Honors
- Fellowship, National Humanities Center, September 2007-May 2008
- Council of Graduate Schools Gustave O. Arlt Award for Spiritual Economies, 2004
- British Academy Neil Ker Memorial Grant, 2003
Selected Publications
Warren, Nancy Bradley. Spiritual Economics. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001
Building on emerging cross-disciplinary trends in feminist scholarship on medieval religion, Warren extends ongoing debates about textual and economic constructions of women’s identities to the rarely considered evidence of monastic theory and practice. To this end, Spiritual Economies emphasizes that the cloister was not impermeable. As worldly forces such as economic trends and political conflicts affected life in the nunneries, so too did religious practices have political impact. In breaking down the convent wall, Warren also succeeds in breaching the boundaries separating the material and the symbolic, the religious and the secular, the literary and the historical.
Warren, Nancy Bradley. The Vernacular Spirit. Palgrave 2002
The late-medieval movement into ‘vernacular theology,’ as it has come to be called, inspired many forms of literary expression, in all the languages of Europe. Spanning a wide field, the contributors to this volume consider hagiography, translations of and commentaries on scripture, accounts of visionary experiences, and devotional literature.
Warren, Nancy Bradley. Women of God and Arms. University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2005
The religious and political spheres of the later medieval and early modern periods were tightly and indisputably interwoven, as illustrated by the papal schism, the Hundred Years War, the Reconquest of Spain, and the English Reformation. In these events as well as in the larger religio political systems in which they unfolded, female saints, devout laywomen, and monastic women played central roles.
Other Publications
- Monasticisms Medieval and Early Modern
- The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700
- “Life Writings in Middle English: Incarnational (Auto)biography”
- “Feminist Approaches to Middle English Religious Literature: The Cases of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe”
- “Changes in the Middle English Canon”
- “Old World Paradigms in Writing about the New World”
- “Religious Writing and Reformations”