Alison I. Beach Profile Banner
Alison I. Beach Profile
Alison I. Beach

@AlisonIBeach

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818
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252
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Joined June 2018
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 months
Come join #TeamNun in at the University of St Andrews! We are hiring a full-time postdoctoral research fellow with expertise in HUMAN OSTEOLOGY for Word of Mouth -- an AHRC-funded study of medieval religious women at work. Applications are open now through 20/09/24. Links below!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
It the wake of what became a bit of a media frenzy, I would like to make a few points about the article and the news coverage. Then I am going back into a nice quiet manuscript reading room to look for more evidence of the contributions of medieval religious women
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
10 months
Thrilled to announce that #TeamNun has been awarded an AHRC Standard Research Grant for a five-year study of medieval religious women combining historical research and archaeological science!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Excited to announce the upcoming publication of “Medieval Women's Early Involvement in Manuscript Production Suggested by Lapis Lazuli Identification in Dental Calculus,” in Science Advances! Tremendously exciting new evidence for the study of medieval female scribes!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
So rather than lament that people didn't know about my work of 25 years -- I am celebrating that this got the attention it did. Rather than being irritated by excited reporting, I am glad that they called and listened and got the word out.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
It exists! In print! It's done!
@A_a_ronGregory
Aaron Gregory
5 years
Saw a proof of @AlisonIBeach 's new edited volume on European monasticism at the @CambridgeUP display at #AHA20 ! Feels like yesterday I was stumbling through Gregory I's Moralia on Job with her and some Med-Ren folks @williamandmary . Congratulations again!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Reviewing yet another book with endnotes and asking why is this a thing? I feel so detached from the sources the author is citing, but going back and forth from chapter to notes disrupts my train of though as I read! Down with endnotes! Down!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Guda -- "sinful woman" and skilled book artist! Raman analysis of the pigments she used in her fabulous twelfth-century homiliary now under way at the University of Frankfurt. Is that precious lapis lazuli she used to paint her own portrait? Stay tuned!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
We bought a house with a view!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Happy to say that I just signed an advance contract with @PennPress for my next book! Women Among the Disciples: Female Religious Life in the High Middle Ages.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
I have some big news!
@DavidAJaeger
David A. Jaeger (econ)
5 years
Big news! I'm very pleased to announce that @AlisonIBeach and I have accepted chairs in medieval history and economics, respectively, at the @univofstandrews ! #evertoexcel
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Historians have skills valued beyond the world of academia. We need to shift the narrative from historians with PhDs settling for "alternative careers" (ie non-academic) to historians using their skills in a variety of careers. Education has value beyond the "sheepskin effect"!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Someone please do an online masterclass in medieval liturgy and liturgical books for interested non-liturgist historians! I would be the first to sign up. #medievaltwitter
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
...shifting the a priori assumptions of our own broader academic field are two different matters. I still struggle to get some colleagues to consider female production and provenance. And frankly the existence of this new form of physical evidence is just plain awesome.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
The first published review of The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West is out and its super-positive and Isabelle Cochelin and I are elated! Nice to see everyone's hard work paying off! @CambridgeUP
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
7 months
@SisterWalburga and Sister Mildred (UK) -- nuns at the ancient Minster Abbey (f. 670). Sister Wallburga is a wonderful representative of Benedictine monasticism in the modern world via her presence on Twitter. #TeamNun loves Benedictine nuns, medieval and modern.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Seen in the @CambridgeUP bookstore in Cambridge!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Aspiring archaeologist or monastic historian? Study the history of monasticism in Scotland and Ireland at the University of St Andrews this May/June in our new Global St Andrews summer school in partnership with The Blackfriary Archaeology Field School in Trim, Ireland!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Excited to report that my first honours course at St Andrews has been approved! History and Archaeology of Mediaeval Monasticism. So excited to teach it!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
What exactly was a "Double Monastery" in the Middle Ages? From 14-16 October @stiftadmont in Austria, an interdisciplinary team of historians, musicologists, art historians, and archaeologists will come together to re-think academic approaches to dual-sex forms religious life!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
First of all, please read the actual article before you draw any conclusions about the project itself:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Happy to announce the debut of my new blog, Scriptrix! My first post asks: "was 'Anonymous' a woman?"
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Excited to be on the other side of my promotion to full professor!
@osuhistorydept
OSU History Department
5 years
Congratulations to Alison Beach and Greg Anderson who have been promoted to the rank of full professor. @OhioState @AlisonIBeach
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Medieval women’s early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
This made my day.
@MedievalMss
Walters Manuscripts
5 years
Okay...after trying our hands at paintings, my son and I decided to make our first attempt at a manuscript re-creation! Here he is as St. Nicholas from the fabulous Claricia Psalter (W.26), created in Germany ca. 1200. Here's a link to the original:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
This most recent one gets so much right! Thanks @elliepses for listening and writing a great article.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
As far as interdisciplinary collaborations go, this one was as good as it gets. As soon as the folks at MPI realized what they had found, they reached out to historians, and to the right ones, with expertise in female scribes in Germany and medieval trade.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
And before we all assume that we all know that women copied books, keep in mind a) that is was a medieval historian first consulted who told the scientific team that women would not have been entrusted with such precious materials, and b) knowing that women copied books and...
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Absolutely thrilled to announce that Dr. Beatrice Demarchi @PalaeoTo1 and I have been awarded a Saltire Research Award from the @RoyalSocEd for our collaborative project From Text to Teeth: An Integrative Study of the Nuns of Santa Maria della Stella! #MedievalTwitter
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
For those saying, of course we knew that: ask who WE are? Most interviews began with some version of "how interesting, I thought that it was monks who copied books," -- and then I began my spiel about that being a common popular perception.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
It's finally out! Read about the ups and downs of this monastery following the Rule of St Benedict across the Rhine from Constance in the twelfth century!
@ManchesterUP
Manchester University Press
5 years
Monastic experience in twelfth-century Germany: The Chronicle of Petershausen in translation | Translated and Edited by @AlisonIBeach , Shannon M. T. Li and Samuel Sutherland | Hardback | eBook | Out now |
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Come to @univofstandrews and study the Middle Ages with us!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Not too late to apply to study Medieval History at St Andrews. Apply now for our MLitt in Medieval History or Medieval Studies
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Traces of a valuable blue stone showed it wasn't just monks who made fabulous manuscripts, reports @sarahzhang :
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Another great digital resource for teaching and researching medieval women -- Epistolae, curated by Joan Ferrante at Columbia University. Medieval women's Latin letters (yes medieval women wrote and copied Latin texts of all sorts...)
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Sister Margareta!
@thatviolin
Dr Sigrid Harris
4 years
Related: Prof. Alison Beach has done some fascinating work on female scribes. Here you see 'Ego soror Margareta' (I am Sister Margareta) in Stift Admont, fragment 262c (ex MS 431), from Beach's blog, Scriptrix:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Scouting sites for a possible Summer School course on monastic history and archaeology in Scotland and Ireland. First stop: Balmerino Abbey, a daughter house of Melrose Abbey (Cistercian).
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Have you actually LOOKED at that chart? There is no plan.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
So pleased to be among the newly elected Fellows of the @RoyalHistSoc !
@RoyalHistSoc
Royal Historical Society
3 years
We're delighted to welcome 282 new Fellows & Members to @RoyalHistSoc today: Congratulations! Along with university researchers, new members include broadcasters, film-makers, curators, librarians & community historians #twitterstorians #historymatters
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Medieval woman artist unmasked by her teeth via @NatGeo
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
9 months
Sister Jacoba Zöll (Germany) -- researching constructions of gender and sanctity in late Medieval Germany. Absolutely Indispensable Organizer of workshops and conferences for AGFEM. #TeamNun loves highly learned and efficient religious women, past and present!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
If delivering a baby makes you a doctor then please henceforth refer to me as Dr. Dr. Alison I. Beach -- one for my Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and one for my (apparent) MD. Thanks.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Just re-read Albrecht Diem's 2013 "Gender of the Religious" getting ready for the first day of my History and Archaeology of Medieval Monasticism course and feeling ever more determined not to teach the old narrative of Male Norms, Female Deviations. Because it is just wrong.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Read about the latest female scribe to emerge from the archives of the monastery of Admont in my latest blog post!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
The media coverage came as a result of a great press release via the MPI. The reporters who called were engaged, respectful, and keen to produce articles that would bring the research into the public spotlight. There intention was to offer the results in that context.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Skilled scribes, painters, embroiders, exegetes, and preachers!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Happy to say that I have agreed to serve as an Associate Review Editor for the AHR (American Historical Review).
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Celebrating in Scotland!
@DavidAJaeger
David A. Jaeger (econ)
4 years
Here’s to you, ⁦ @JoeBiden ⁩! Greetings from Scotland!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Thanks to @atlasobscura for a great article that captures a lot of the importance of the article's findings.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
What a great few days of very Benedictine hospitality at the venerable @stiftadmont ! Thrilled that Abbot Gerhard has initiated and annual commemoration of Admont’s learned nuns! Quite right!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
This is a goldmine for teaching!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Excited to have handed over Monastic Experience in Twelfth-Century Germany to @ManchesterUP -- looking forward the next steps!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Study medieval history in a medieval university in a medieval town! Applications are open now for the MLitt in Medieval History at St Andrews!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
@school_tales I have studied female scribes for some 25 years and yesterday 1000s of people cared and learned some of what we specialists know
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Let's play a game #medievaltwitter and #nuntastic ! How many errors can you spot here? And more importantly, how do we reach a broader audience for the work that we do?
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
For 7 years I led a wonderful study abroad course at @Blackfriarydig for the @osuhistorydept with @digsteeth . Since we can't be there this year, I am going to tweet my way through the virtual course -- one photo a day for all 30 days of what should have been Blackfriary 8
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Interested in medieval religious women and their communities? Do you know about AGFEM -- a collegial and international group of scholars who meet annually to discuss #nuntastic projects?
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
I can highly recommend Scotland. Natural beauty and lots of cultural interest. A female First Minister who stands up to the pos PM. Great universities. Friendly people. Just putting that out there...
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Excited to announce that the Monastic Matrix is going with me to St Andrews SAIMS. New era for a great resource!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Welcome home at long last @MonasticMatrix ! We are now officially up and running at the @StAndrewsSAIMS !
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Excited to report that I am now serving as director for the St Andrews Centre for Archaeology, Technology, and History. A worthy home for #TeamNun and wider collaborations with @PalaeoTo1 , @AnitaRadini at @ucdarchaeology , @kimmcurran , Derek Hall, and others!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Good morning #medievaltwitter and #nuntastic ! For remote learning and research, check out the venerable Monastic Matrix for resources on women's religious communities -- sources, bibliography, images.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
8 months
#TeamNun is on the road -- giving the Medieval History Research Seminar at All Souls College, Oxford, tomorrow evening. Our first two assemblages -- Santa Maria della Stella (Italy) and Elstow Abbey (England) will be in the spotlight!!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Teaching a year-long module on Germany in the High Middle Ages at St Andrews was a challenge -- so much key literature is inaccessible to my students here who mainly do not read any German.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 months
St Andrews ME4757 -- Monks & Nuns, Saints & Bishops: Germany in the High Middle Ages (Scotland) -- you get a class like this once in a career if you are lucky. Hardworking, smart, and creative. It was such fun to introduce them to medieval Germany.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
@nedratio @JoeBiden no you don't and that's not how democracy works
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Also visit @sarajcharles great site Teaching Medieval Manuscripts for more on the colours used by artists like Guda:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
3 years
Call for Papers! Admont II: Reimagining the Medieval Double Monastery in Interdisciplinary Perspective. To be held at the Monastery of Admont on 14-16 October 2022.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Medieval Woman's Art Career Revealed by Blue Stains on Teeth
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Applications open for the Bullough Fellowship in @StAndrewsHist -- the School of History at St Andrews. Deadline 1 December. Apply! We have a great community of medieval historians.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
I am making one of these next time I chair a session
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
@BenBGDalton No and no. Where on earth do you think my books would go?? And why does my need for an office space for my work have to be turned into some "lonely" life that needs fixing. I am not lonely and I collaborate just fine. What about a Common Room for those happy 'collabs'?
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
And we're off! Great first day for the first St Andrews-Blackfriary Archaeology Field School Summer School!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
A Blue Clue In Medieval Teeth May Bespeak A Woman's Artistry Circa 1,000 A.D.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
I love this neighborhood.
@DavidAJaeger
David A. Jaeger (econ)
5 years
Washington Heights thanks our doctors, nurses, first responsers, and those working to keep them safe and working.. like �� @NYGovCuomo ⁩.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Our morning walk. What a beautiful place @univofstandrews is!
@DavidAJaeger
David A. Jaeger (econ)
4 years
Good morning, Fife!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
You know what I love these days? Translating Latin. I am working on a big new translation project with my parter-in-Latin-translation crime Sam Sutherland and it is a great thing to dive into and forget about the rest of the world. The twelfth century is a great place to hide!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Nice extended review of my Trauma of Monastic Reform in Marginalia (LA Times Review of Books)!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Cafe 452
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
“It didn’t surprise me, it thrilled me,” says Beach, the history professor and co-author in the study. Beach has studied female manuscript makers since graduate school, hoping to make the public understand their role in producing some of the most elaborate artworks of the age.."
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton opens with the story of B78 and the lapis lazuli in her dental calculus! The very first line of the book's Introduction:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
I accept @ferro_eva 's #DecoratedInitialChallenge ! My first is this smug rabbit coming to us from a Q painted by Guda in her twelfth-century homiliary. Uni Frankfurt MS Barth 42, f. 23v.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
9 months
Sally Poor (USA) -- outstanding medievalist whose work on thirteenth-century religious woman and mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg took on received notions of female authorship and made us question time-honored assumptions of women's exclusion from the canon of European literature.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
When you are digging a Dominican priory you need to meet a real Dominican friar! Great tour - thank you @ConorMcDonough4 . @Blackfriarydig @GlobalOfficeStA monasticism summer school
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
@DigitalHistory_ The tooth of B78, religious woman of Dalheim, with lapis lazuli in her dental calculus. Blew my mind to hold that tooth in my hand (here with my fabulous and amazing co-authors @twarinner and @AnitaRadini ). I got to meet B78 during a visit to MPI in Jena.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
9 months
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
On my way to @stiftadmont for the Rethinking Medieval Double Monasteries conference! Looking forward to three days of great conversations in this lovely formerly double monastery in Steiermark, Austria.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Exciting work in the lab this week for our #Text2Teeth project! Funded through a Saltire Network Facilitation Grant from the @RoyalSocEd ! Joint work between @univofstandrews @StAndrewsSAIMS and @PalaeoTo1 at the @unito .
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
6 years
Challenged by both @ferro_eva and @arnamagnaean , I can no longer hide... Here is my Day 2 image, a D from Admont Ms 62, f. 109, a nice Holy Family shot leading off a sermon for the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Sermon unconvincingly attributed to the monk Godfrey, but maybe nuns!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
It's nice that Philipp Wilhelm Gercken noted in his 1783 manuscript-hunter's travelog that "the nuns in [twelfth- century German-speaking lands] copied many manuscripts, usually very neatly with great diligence, as I have found more samples of them in the monastery libraries."
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Had a dream that a group of angry nuns was harassing me about how long it is taking me to get this paper written -- time to finish this stuff and get it out there!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Call for abstracts: Communication, Consolidation, and Change: Epistolary Cultures and the Medieval Cloister (Sanctimoniales Series, Brepols).
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
Just putting this out here for reference:
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
The view from my office today!
@DavidAJaeger
David A. Jaeger (econ)
2 years
Good afternoon, Crail!
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
4 years
simple idea for helping new faculty figure out their new institution: a list of acronyms spelled out in full.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
5 years
Enough of the "she was too angry" thing. Women, like men, get angry. Often with good reason. Get over it.
@AOC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
5 years
Warren was not mean, nor angry. She was effective. And by the way, we are allowed to be angry about racial profiling. You’re allowed to be angry about sexual harassment. Or at big banks committing fraud against single parents. Anger at injustice is quite appropriate.
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
When medievalists tour…auf der Reichenau
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@AlisonIBeach
Alison I. Beach
2 years
Desodded! Let the digging begin! @Blackfriarydig and @GlobalOfficeStA
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