Overview

What can anthropological and folkloristic approaches to food, gender, and medicine tell us about these topics in the Middle Ages beyond the textual evidence itself? Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humours uses these approaches to look at the textual traditions of dietary recommendations for women’s health, placed within the context of the larger cultural concerns of gender roles and Church teachings about women. Women are expected to be nurturers, healers, and the primary locus of food provisioning for families, especially women of the lower social classes, typically overlooked in the written record. This work illuminates what we can know about women, food, medicine, and diet in the Middle Ages, and examines how the written medical tradition interacts with folk medicine and other cultural factors in both understanding women’s bodies and their roles as healers and food providers.

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Reviews

"""By exploring intersections of medicine, food and gender, Vaughan makes a valuable contribution to research about women in the medieval period. [...] This volume’s examination of Greco-Roman medical theory combined with analysis of medieval medical and religious texts helps to situate it as an important advancement in understanding medieval women and women’s bodies."" - Judith Lanzendorfer, Digest, Vol. 9, No. 1 ""[...] a welcome and much needed study of the space where gender, eating, and wellness all came together in premodern Europe. [...] Vaughan’s wide lens and fluid approach permit her to present a fuller portrait of the relationship between premodern women and food than is typical."" - Danielle Callegari, Early Modern Women, Vol. 17, No. 1 ""Vaughan does several things very well in this book. The scope is sweeping and interesting. Clearly written and accessible, it should teach well to undergraduates new to the study of gender in the Middle Ages; each chapter can stand on its own."" - Belle S. Tuten, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 61, No. 3"

By exploring intersections of medicine, food and gender, Vaughan makes a valuable contribution to research about women in the medieval period. [...] This volume's examination of Greco-Roman medical theory combined with analysis of medieval medical and religious texts helps to situate it as an important advancement in understanding medieval women and women's bodies. - Judith Lanzendorfer, Digest, Vol. 9, No. 1

By exploring intersections of medicine, food and gender, Vaughan makes a valuable contribution to research about women in the medieval period. [...] This volume's examination of Greco-Roman medical theory combined with analysis of medieval medical and religious texts helps to situate it as an important advancement in understanding medieval women and women's bodies. - Judith Lanzendorfer, Digest, Vol. 9, No. 1 [...] a welcome and much needed study of the space where gender, eating, and wellness all came together in premodern Europe. [...] Vaughan's wide lens and fluid approach permit her to present a fuller portrait of the relationship between premodern women and food than is typical. - Danielle Callegari, Early Modern Women, Vol. 17, No. 1

Author Information

Theresa A. Vaughan is Professor of Humanities in the department of Humanities and Philosophy, Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Liberal Arts, and Assistant Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Central Oklahoma. She obtained her Ph.D. in Folklore with a double minor in Anthropology from Indiana University. Her work focuses on women’s folklore, foodways, and the Middle Ages. She is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Women’s Folklore and Folklife with Liz Locke and Pauline Greenhill, and serves on the editorial boards of Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture and Journal of Folklore Research.

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