Dr Anke Bernau - research

Specific research interests:

My research and teaching interests cover a wide range of medieval (and early modern) genres and themes, such as:

• Medieval and early modern memory theory and literary explorations of aspects of individual and communal memory
• History of emotions
• National foundation myths and historiography (medieval and early modern)
• Hagiography, mysticism and medieval religious cultures
• Cinematic representations of the Middle Ages
• Writings on virginity (medieval to modern)

I am currently particularly interested in questions of the ways in which different medieval literary genres and cultural practices engaged with questions of individual and communal memory - and how such understandings changed (or did not) in the sixteenth century. I have a longstanding interest gender studies, particularly in relation to virginity and abstinence (both medieval and contemporary), and I also work on medievalism - that is, on post-medieval representations and popular conceptions of the 'medieval' or 'middle ages'.

Current research projects:

I completed a history of female virginity, entitled Virgins: A Cultural History with Granta in 2007. This study explores different discourses of virginity from ca. 1200 to the present day. In 2009, Bettina Bildhauer and I co-edited and published a collection of essays on cinematic representations on the Middle Ages, Medieval Film, with Manchester University Press. I have also been researching late medieval and early modern treatments of the Albina myth, in relation to theories of memory and history. Three articles about this have been published since 2007.

I am currently starting a new project on medieval and early modern literary explorations of individual and communal memory, for which I have been awarded a Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship for 2011-12.