Dr. Lezlie Knox

Dr. Lezlie KnoxMarquette University

Sensenbrenner Hall, 303H

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-7863lezlie.knox@marquette.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Department Chair

History

Associate Professor

Lezlie Knox brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of the Middle Ages drawn from her undergraduate majors in History and Art History (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and her graduate training at Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute.

Dr. Knox works with BA and MA students whose interests range across the Middle Ages, and she would welcome applications from doctoral students whose research is based in sixteenth-century Europe.

Courses Taught

She teaches broadly in medieval history, regularly offering a survey course, as more specialized classes focusing on the Crusades, the Black Death, manuscripts, and gender in the pre-modern world, and the Italian Renaissance.

Research Interests

Her research has focused particularly on the Franciscan Order in later medieval Italy. She is currently working on a biographical project focusing on the prolific chronicler Mariano of Florence (d. 1523) as a lens for exploring the experience of being Franciscan as the Order's major factions fought for status in the towns and ecclesiastical centers of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italy. A long-term project, focusing on prisons and imprisonment practices within the medieval mendicant orders, will receive attention again in the future. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright program, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (for a summer seminar). 

Professional Experience

Representative titles of supervised MA essays include:

• Authority and Masculinity in Humbert of Romans’ De Eruditione Praedicatorum and De Predicatione Sancte Crucis
• Un grande scandala e vergogna: The Construction of Umiltà of Faenza’s Sanctity, c. 1226-1280
• FindingPower and Autonomy in Sanctity: The Life of Christina of Markyate Re-examined
• The Chivalric Crusade? Captivity, Ransom, and Executions in the Third Crusade
• Proving Grounds: Chivalry as Developmental Measurement and Monarchical Aptitude
• Charlemagne, the Father of European Identity: Religion, Sacral Language, and Imagined Communities
• The Teutonic Knights and Christianization: Impact on Prussia and the Baltic
• Trapped in Satan’s Claws: English Cognition Assessed Through Parallels in Outside Perceptions of the Devil’s Role in Suicide and Witchcraft Via Analysis of Conscience, Temptation, and Ambition, 1550-1650
•  “Any Other Place in the World:” The Tragedy of the Spunging House in Early Modern England

Specialization

Medieval, Renaissance

Publications

She has published widely on the female branch of the Order, including the book Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Brill, 2008). Visions of Sainthood in Medieval Rome: The Lives of Margherita Colonna by Giovanni Colonna and Stefania, a collaborative project with Larry F. Field (translator) and Sean L. Field will appear in 2017.