Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Affiliation: Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Keywords: Medieval Christianity; medieval monasticism; history of emotions; embodied devotional practices; performance studies; religious history

About Me: Lauren Mancia looks at what medieval Europeans left behind — art, writings, artifacts, images, manuscripts, buildings, etc. — in order to understand how they experienced their religion, and, thereby, how they understood themselves. In her research, Mancia focuses on the devotional culture of medieval monasteries in the 11th and 12th centuries. Her courses often stem from her research interests (e.g., courses on medieval Christianity or on the history of emotions), but she also teaches courses on wider subjects of medieval and early modern history. Prof. Mancia is also a lecturer at The Met Cloisters, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the study of medieval art; and she teaches regularly in the online courses of the 92Y Roundtable.

Recent Publications: Prof. Mancia is a historian of medieval Christian monasticism and monastic devotional practice. Her first book, Emotional Monasticism: Affective Piety in the Eleventh-Century Monastery of John of Fécamp (Manchester, 2019/paperback 2021), sheds light on the high medieval monastic roots of later medieval affective piety. Her second book, Struggling Toward God: Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastery (ARC Humanities Press/Amsterdam University Press, 2023), is for scholars and general readers alike. Her next book, Embodied Epistemology as a Rigorous Historical Method, is forthcoming from Cambridge Elements in 2026.

Expertise by Topic: Art & Architectural History, Book History, Material Culture, Museums, Pedagogy, Public History, Religion