# Dyan Elliott (historian)

Dyan Elliott is a medievalist historian and scholar, whose focus of academic research is “gender, sexuality, spirituality, and the ongoing tensions between orthodoxy and religious dissent.” She received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 1989. Elliott works as a professor of history at Northwestern University, where she teaches a myriad of classes about the daily life, figures and constructs of the medieval period.

## Research and career

Elliott was born in 1954 and was raised Anglican by a very religious mother, attending mass at least three times a week. Although she is no longer religious, she has credited her religious upbringing for sparking her interest in church history. Dyan Elliott’s research about “gender, sexuality, spirituality” adds levels of evaluation and understanding regarding church history, and those who were affected negatively and positively by its hierarchy and authority figures. Elliott's care in her presentation of these female figures, who were so important to the faith but vulnerable because of their sex, is the type of historical research that is distinctive to read. Her work is highly respected and has won her several prestigious awards and fellowships in her field. Throughout her books, Elliott is praised for skillfully presenting and formatting her research clearly, and with unique ideas and analysis.

## Awards

Elliot has received the following awards:
* National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research Fellowship, 2021.
* John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2020.
* ACLS Fellowship, September 2016- September 2017.
* National Humanities Center Fellowship, 2012-13.
* Elected fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, March 2010.

## Books

* Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992)
* Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
* Proving Woman: Female Mysticism and Inquisitional Practice in Late Medieval Europe (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004; winner of the Otto Gründler Award for outstanding contribution to medieval studies)
* The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)
* The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

## Articles and essays

* Elliott, Dyan (2002). "Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc". The American Historical Review. 107 (1): 26–54. doi:10.1086/532095. ISSN 0002-8762.
* Elliott, Dyan (2017). "Violence against the Dead: The Negative Translation and damnatio memoriae in the Middle Ages". Speculum. 92 (4): 1020–1055. ISSN 0038-7134.
* Elliott, Dyan (2008). "The Three Ages of Joan Scott". The American Historical Review. 113 (5): 1390–1403. ISSN 0002-8762.
* Elliott, Dyan (2010). "Historical Faith/Historian's Faith". Religion & Literature. 42 (1/2): 247–252. ISSN 0888-3769.
* Elliott, Dyan (2013-08-22), Bennett, Judith; Karras, Ruth (eds.), "Gender and The Christian Traditions", The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, p. 0, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199582174.013.011, ISBN 978-0-19-958217-4, retrieved 2025-01-01