Miti (Marita) von Weissenberg
marita.vonweissenberg@yale.edu
My Ph.D. dissertation, titled Men in the Family – Husbands in Society: Men, Marriage and Masculinity in Late Medieval Hagiography, uses biographies of married saints from ca. 1100-1500 to bring together family history, social history, and masculinity studies. I am particularly interested in how the social rights, roles and responsibilities of husbands are portrayed. The biographies are explicitly about religious experiences and expectations, but they implicitly show men negotiating masculinities with their families, wives, and other members of society. My adviser is Paul Freedman.
Before coming to Yale I graduated with an MA in General History from Åbo Akademi, Finland. My MA minors were Medieval Studies and Latin (at the University of Turku).
I am deeply interested in bringing together research and student mentoring in the classroom. I see teaching as perpetuating knowledge and showing students ways to engage with the world around us – past and present – in a critical and responsible manner. The Middle Ages, the period I study, are often a mythical past for students, an era from which movies, novels and role-playing games mine ideas for modern entertainment. Some the most rewarding moments of my professional life are when I have helped students realize how central the Middle Ages are for the formation of the world they know today – for example, the impact of Christianity or the rise of cities and trade on Western society, democracy, government, banking, not to mention the university world the students themselves inhabit. As part of my commitment to teaching, I am pursuing the Certificate for College Teaching Preparation offered by the Yale Graduate Teaching Center.
In addition to being an academic, I am an avid craftswoman and baker, alternating knitting, cross stitch, cakes, cookies and other projects with reading, writing, and teaching.
