Dr. Amanda Power

B.A. (Sydney), Ph.D. (Cantab.)

Senior Lecturer in Medieval History

Medieval religious and intellectual history; the history of the Mediterranean

a.power@sheffield.ac.uk

+44 (0)114 22 22560
 

Jessop West 2.12

Major Publications

Biography

Amanda works on the intellectual, religious and political life of medieval Europe. She specialises in the history of the Franciscan order. Her current research project examines the responses of religious and secular authorities to the new geographical information gathered in the wake of the Mongol conquests, and to the influx of Greco-Arabic learning from the Mediterranean world.

Research

Current Research

Amanda works on the intellectual, religious and political life of medieval Europe. She has recently completed a monograph, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom, which re-imagines this prominent figure in the history of medieval science as a committed Franciscan and reformer. She is currently working on two major projects. The first examines the development of the English province of the Franciscan order within its wider ecclesiastical, intellectual and social contexts. The other is concerned with the diplomatic and religious missions to Mongols and Muslims by Franciscans and Dominicans during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Research Interests

Amanda is interested in the functioning of the mendicant orders within, and as products of, the complex, cosmopolitan society of medieval Europe. Her work investigates the distinctive religious and cosmographical imagination of the period and its impact upon public affairs. She is particularly interested in the responses of religious and secular authorities to the new geographical information gathered in the wake of the Mongol conquests, and to the influx of Greco-Arabic learning from the Mediterranean world.

Research Supervision and Teaching

Amanda Power has taught undergraduate courses in medieval European history and historiography, currently offering modules on Mediterranean history from 500-1450: a Level Two Option, Sacred Violence in the Medieval Mediterranean (HST280) and a Special Subject: Muslims, Mongols and the West, 1095-1350. At postgraduate level, she offers an MA module: Imagining the Unseen in the Middle Ages (HST683). She is willing to supervise research in the areas of later medieval thought, the religious orders, expansion of European horizons, inter-faith relations and ecclesiastical history.

Current PhD Students

• Ben Lacey - 'Communities of Religion in the Twelfth Century North of England.'
• Robyn Parker - 'The Social Theatre of Wandering Preachers and Hermits in France, 1050-1150.'
• Daniel Murphy - 'The Tormented Church: Visions of Crisis and Reform in the Medieval Imagination, c. 1150-1250.'
• Elizabeth Goodwin - 'Female Monastic Experience of Reform in England, 1300-1540'.

Administrative Roles and Responsibilities

 Amanda is currently on maternity leave.

Selected Publications

Books

- Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Articles and Essays

- 'The Cosmographical Imagination of Roger Bacon' in K. D. Lilley (ed.), Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical encounters and cartographic cultures in the Latin West and beyond: 300-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2013)

- ‘The Importance of Greeks in Latin Thought: the Evidence of Roger Bacon’ in Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor edited by R. Gertwagen and E. Jeffreys (London: Ashgate, 2012), 351-78

- 'The Remedies for Great Danger: Contemporary Appraisals of Roger Bacon's Expertise' in J. Canning, E. King and M. Staub (eds), Knowledge, Discipline and Power: Essays in Honour of David Luscombe (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Leiden: Brill, 2011) pp. 63-78.

- 'Going among the infidels: the mendicant orders and Louis IX's first Mediterranean campaign', Mediterranean Historical Review, 25.2 (2010) pp. 187-202.

- 'In the last days at the end of the world: Roger Bacon and the reform of Christendom' in J. Rohrkasten and M. Robson (eds.), Acts of the Franciscan History Conference held at the Franciscan International Study Centre on 9th September 2006 (Canterbury Studies in Franciscan History, 1. Canterbury, 2008), pp. 135-51.

- 'Franciscan Advice to the Papacy in the Middle Ages', History Compass, 5.5 (2007) pp. 1550-1575.

- 'A Mirror for Every Age: the Reputation of Roger Bacon', English Historical Review, 121, no. 492 (2006) pp. 657-692.

- 'Infideles in the Opus maius of Roger Bacon', in Geraldine Barnes and Gabrielle Singleton (eds.), Travel and Travellers from Bede to Dampier: Papers from the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies Workshop 22-23 August 2001 (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005)