Medieval Studies

Faculty and Staff Directory

Theresa Marie Earenfight

Professor, Pigott-McCone Chair 2012-2014
History, Women and Gender Studies

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

Phone

(206) 296-5479

Email

theresa@seattleu.edu

Office

Casey 410

Biography

When I was fourteen, I shook hands with Bobby Kennedy, just a few months before he was assassinated. A year later I read, actually I devoured, Antonia Fraser’s biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. I didn’t know it then, but that combination of politics and women in history sealed my fate. Since then, no matter what other things I’ve done in my life (such as working in the education department of a museum and two contemporary art galleries, cooking Spanish food, skiing, cycling, swimming), I’ve been trying to unravel the problem of women and political power and authority. My junior year in Barcelona, Spain made me want to spend as much time as possible there, and so I went to Fordham for my MA and PhD, did dissertation research on a Fulbright fellowship to Barcelona, and remain utterly fascinated with Spanish queens. You can read some of my thoughts on the subject in my edited collection of essays, Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, an article entitled “Doing without the Persona of the Prince? Kings, Queens, and the Idea of Monarchy in Medieval Europe,” and my book,The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. I’m working on a textbook on the subject of, you guessed it, medieval queenship.