My current book project presents Margaret of Flanders’ (1350-1405) innovative use of architecture and sculpture as a technological solution for accessing the divine and explores the tangled web of gender expression woven through that access and its performance. By connecting the sensorial experiences at the contemporaneously built ducal oratories of the Chartreuse de Champmol and the Château de Germolles, I identify Margaret’s requirements for such a space as well as how she adapted these requirements to the specific physical and social contexts of each. Comparisons of these oratories to those Margaret experienced and those produced by her offspring chart her potential influences, her own ingenuity, and the impact she had on the oratories that came after her. The book contextualizes Margaret’s efforts within the nuanced expressions of gender during the late medieval and early modern. In doing so, it connects Margaret’s work to the contemporaneous efforts to assert the holy authority of women by connecting their perceived fleshy embodied-ness with Christ’s holiness.

The first season of this archaeological excavation (2023) studied two zones of the Château de Germolles: the upper chapel and the first floor walk above the main castle gate. The primary objective for each zone was a better understanding of the medieval experience of the two spaces, in part through the identification of the original circulation levels. In the upper chapel (zone one) the excavation had the additional goal of establishing whether the chapel was, in fact, a smaller space delineated by some barrier or boundary, given the incongruous nature of the window seat on the northern wall of the upper chapel. The second season (2024) will continue to excavate the upper chapel to establish the nature of its division into two spaces and the circulation level of the choir of the upper chapel in relation to the ducal oratory.

My second book project examines oratories as a holistic trend, reuniting philosophies and technologies of accessing the divine that, I argue, would have been understood in their time as overlapping within the broader trend of affective prayer. This period of study extends from the fourth century into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and builds upon surveys of structures completed during my studies in Ireland and my Fulbright-funded research in France and Belgium.

This manuscript, which is written for a general audience, seeks to introduce the public to the long-standing presence of gender fluidity as well as intersex and trans individuals in the Christian west.