Elizabeth Lehfeldt

Professor and Historian Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt
Born	January 1966
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Medieval Historian and Professor
Academic background
Education	Lawrence University (1988)
Alma mater	Lawrence University (BA, 1988) Indiana University (MA, Ph.D, 1990-96)
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	Medieval Studies, late medieval monasteries and nuns
Institutions	Cleveland State University
Notable works	Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: the Permeable Cloister in 2005

Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt (born January 1966) is an American historian of medieval studies, focusing primarily on the importance of late medieval monasteries and nuns in Europe. She was the former dean of the Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Honors College and Mandel Professor in Humanities at Cleveland State University. Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt is currently a History professor at Cleveland State University and has been since 1995.

Education

Elizabeth Lehfeldt completed her undergraduate career at Lawrence University as a history major, graduating in June 1988 with Magna Cum Laude. She then, completed her Masters' in early Modern European History from Indiana University in 1990, and completing her PhD of early Modern European History in 1996. Lehfeldt also received an certificate of Medieval studies in 1991 from the same institution she completed both her masters and PhD.

Career

Scholarly career

Lehfeldt has published several articles since 1996 on a variety of topics, mainly on early Spanish monasteries with a focus on nuns and the covenants and has even published a book about this topic. She published the book, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: the Permeable Cloister in 2005 (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World); this book was an examination of the role nuns played in late medieval Spain and how gender, religion, and sexuality interacted during this era. The book received positive reviews from critics. One review of the book from an expert in the field, Kimberlyn Lynn Hossain, said in her review:

In such fashion, her six chapters cohere internally and build upon each other, both thematically and chronologically. She analyzes convent patronage, economic management, litigation of numerous kinds, and religious reform, focusing on the mid-fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries. She examines both the spiritual bounds of the convent and its physical spaces. Through numerous lenses, she argues for the permeability of the cloister, even in an era in which much religious reform centered on the cloistering of female religious communities: she carefully demonstrates that the business of life occurred inside the cloister and not simply around it (Hossain, Kimberly Lynn, 836).

Besides writing a book on the subject matter of medieval Spanish nuns, Lehfeldt has also published other works on the topic of late medieval Spain. They include:

• Gender, Order, and the Meaning of Monasticism during the Reign of Isabel and Ferdinand (Archive of Reformation History, 2002)
• Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth Century Spain (Renaissance Quarterly, 2008)
• Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile (Renaissance Quarterly, 2000)
• Why Nuns Aren’t Funny (The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2019)
• Uneven conversions: how did laywomen become nuns in the early modern world? in "Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe", edited by Simon Ditchfield and Helen Smith (literary scholar) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017)

Professional career

Alongside her scholarly research and writing, Lehfeldt has served in several different administrative positions throughout her career. She held the position of dean of the Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Honors College and Mandel Professor in Humanities at Cleveland State University with several responsibilities that involved managing over 400 students, instructors, as well as the fiances with a budget of $600,000. At CSU, she has held positions of department chair for the history department (August 2009-2014) and interim director for the honors program (September 2014-June 2015) at the school. Outside of CSU, she held an administrative position as president of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference from 2013-2014. For professional activities, she was apart of the advisory committee of the American Historical Association since 2019 as a valued member for their historical gateways project as the project's goal was to increase the efficacy and retention rates in undergraduates history degree programs as higher education is very important to her.

Honors and awards

Lehfeldt has received recognition for her accomplishments, not only as a historian, but as an educator and they include the following, spanning from 1996 to 2011:

• American Historical Association, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Research Grant for Research in Europe, Africa, and Asia (1996)
• Grant for research from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United State's Universities (1997)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (1997)
• Enhancing Full-Time Faculty Research Development (EFFRD), Graduate College, Cleveland State University (2001)
• Grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities (2001)
• NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers: “A Literature of Their Own Women Writing, Venice, London, Madrid, Paris, 1550-1750” (2005)
• Cleveland State University Faculty Scholarship Initiative Award (2011)

Bibliography

Secondary Published Sources

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Gender, Order, and the Meaning of Monasticism during the

Reign of Isabel and Ferdinand.” Archive of Reformation History, Vol. 93, (2002):

145-171. https://doi.org/10.14315/arg-2002-jg09

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth Century Spain.” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 61, no. 2 (Summer, 2008):463-494.

https://doi.org/10.1353/ren.0.0024

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile.” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 53, no. 1 (Spring, 2000): 31-56. https://doi.org/10.2307/2901532 (Accessed September 20, 2024).

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Uneven conversions: how did laywomen become nuns in the early modern world?” In Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe, edited by Simon Ditchfield and Helen Smith, 127-43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Why Nuns Aren’t Funny.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 50, no. 1 (Spring, 2019): 69-75. https://doi.org/10.1086/SCJ5001010

Book Reviews

Hossain, Kimberly Lynn. Review of Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: the permeable cloister,  by Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt. The Catholic Historical Review 94, no. 2 (2008): 835:836. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cat.0.0176. Project Muse.

Websites

Cleveland State University. “Faculty Profile: Elizabeth Lehfeldt.”

https://facultyprofile.csuohio.edu/csufacultyprofile/detail.cfm?FacultyID=E_LEHFELDT

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth. “Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt.” https://elizabethalehfeldt.com/

WomenAlsoKnowHistory. “Individual Scholar Page: Elizabeth Lehfeldt.”

https://womenalsoknowhistory.com/individual-scholar-page/?pdb=371