Last week, the history department launched its colloquium series. This first lecture featured Amy Livingstone and her recent sabbatical to Europe.
Livingstone is a professor of medieval history here at Wittenberg. She is also a counselor for the Medieval Academy of America. She has published four articles in the last three years. She has been a speaker at nine different colleges, both nationally and internationally.
Livingstone is also a co-leader for the Wittenberg in Paris Program. This is a month-long program where Wittenberg students explore the history of the Middle Ages by visiting the museums and monuments of medieval Paris. She is currently working on a second book called “Medieval Lives,” as well as a biography of Ermagrade of Britain.
Her publications include: “Out of Love for My Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000-1200,” [Cornell Press, March 2010], “Noblewomen’s Control of Property in Twelfth-Century Blois-Chartres,” [Medieval Prosopography 18, 1997] and “Powerful Allies and Dangerous Adversaries: Aristocratic Women and Power in Medieval France” [Women in Medieval Western European Culture, 1998].
Livingstone’s research interests focus upon aristocratic life of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the region surrounding the cathedral town of Chartres. During her sabbatical to Europe, she focused on the lives of the Beaugency family. She focused mainly on their lives during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. She went to the area in France where they ruled, a small village located on the Loire River. A travel guide took her to many churches and historical locations in the small town.
During her time in Beaugency, she also found a very interesting history on the nuns there. She plans on further researching the nuns when she gets more time. Beaugency has an interesting history involving many historical battles throughout the centuries, as well as the divorce of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII.
After her time in Beaugency, she went to England in July. During that time, she studied in the British Library, which is the largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. She spent this time in the library studying Ermengarde of Brittany. The biography she plans to write about her will be titled “Powerful in Eloquence, Shrewd in Counsel.” The book has been approved for publishing and should be out in the near future.
Livingstone is an accomplished member of the community. She has published many works and has been recognized for her many accomplishments. She has also appeared in a documentary on National Geographic, historical consultant for the National Geographic Documentary “Engineering the Impossible: Chartres Cathedral.”
