Biographers Archives | National Humanities Center

Biographers

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Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages

By Thomas J. Heffernan (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) Though medieval "saints' lives" are among the oldest literary texts of Western vernacular culture, they are routinely patronized as "pious fiction" by modern historiography. This book demonstrates that to characterize the genre as fiction is to misunderstand the intentions of medieval authors, who were neither credulous fools nor … Continued

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Thinking Through the Mothers: Reimagining Women’s Biographies

By Janet Beizer (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) If questions of subjectivity and identification are at stake in all biographical writing, they are particularly trenchant for contemporary women biographers of women. Often, their efforts to exhume buried lives in hope of finding spiritual foremothers awaken maternal phantoms that must be embraced or confronted. Do women writing in … Continued