Annalena Mueller
But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.
(Marc Bloch)
As an undergraduate student, Annalena Müller studied history, sociology, and political science at the universities of Mainz (Germany) and Tours (France). She then pursued a Master’s Degree (Maîtrise and D.E.A.) in medieval history at Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne where she graduated with honors in 2009. In the fall of the same year, she started doctoral studies at Yale.
Annalena’s dissertation focuses on the French abbey of Fontevraud, famous for its female government presiding over a mixed congregation. She is particularly interested in the order’s long and conflictive reform (ca. 1450-1650) and its intertwinement to a series of larger and broader topics such as the expansion of royal power after the Hundred Year’s War and the increasing secularization of the political sphere. On a more theological level, her dissertation inquires about the influence of Gallicanism, and later of Jansenism, on the resistance movements within the order. Her dissertation committee includes Paul Freedman, Claudia Opitz-Belakhal (Basel), Carlos Eire and Francesca Trivellato.
Other than monastic history, her general research interests include German and French societies during the medieval and early modern periods, political philosophy and theory (ca. 1300-1600) as well as the relationships and interdependence of pivotal medieval and early modern institutions.
Annalena will finish her Ph.D in 2014.
