Janet Ravenscroft
Writer, editor, academic
CURRENT PROJECTS
Project |01
Project |01 Homo-Debilis
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I am an external member of the interdisciplinary research group, Homo-Debilis (www.homo-debilis.de), run by Professor Cordule Nolte at Bremen University, Germany. Members of Homo-Debilis are working to discover how people experienced disability in the pre-modern era, and to explore the impact of disability on society as a whole.
I was invited to present a session on early modern representations of dis/ability at the Disease, Disability and Medicine conference in Bremen in December 2015, and have an entry in the ground-breaking Homo-Debilis handbook on disability history (pub 2017).
Project |02
Project |02 Brill
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I have a chapter entitled 'Dwarfs – and a "Loca" – as Ladies’ Maids at the Spanish Habsburg Courts' in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across early modern Europe, edited by Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben (Leiden: Brill, 2013). This is part of the series 'Rulers & Elites: Comparative Studies in Governance', edited by Jeroen Duindam.
You can read a review of my 'entertaining and informative study of dwarfs and the so-called "madwoman", Magdalena Ruiz' in the June 2014 issue of History Today magazine.
Project |03
Project |03 VariAbilit(ies)
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I'm interested in the relationship between representations of physical and social difference and the lived experience of people with uncommon minds and bodies in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
In something a little different, I explored the use of feet and bare flesh in the work of Velazquez, Ribera and Murillo at VariAbilit(ies) II at Winchester University in July 2015.
I spoke about the Hapsburgs and their dwarfs at the first VariAbilit(ies) Conference: The History and Representation of the Body in its Diversity, at Emory University, Atlanta, GA (USA) 4–6 July 2013. The paper was entitled '"Who are you looking at?" Picturing difference in early modern Spain'.
My paper ‘The same only different: monarchs and their entertainers in early modern Spain’ at the 2013 Workshop on 'Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe (AD400-1600)' was presented at Augusta Regents University, USA.
You can find a list of talks and publications on my academic CV.
Project |04
Project |04 Fiction
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My first venture into writing fiction was a novella entitled An Unexpected Affair (July 2013) published by the leading digital-first publishers, Endeavour Press. This was followed by three more e-novella, all of which were bought by Waverley Books and published in paperback in 2017 alongside a mystery called The Bookshop Detective. All the books are written under the nom-de-plume Jan Ellis.
Visit my fiction website for news, reviews and extracts. You can also follow me on Twitter @JanEllis_writer and on Facebook.
Project |05
Project |05 Words and pictures
Alongside my academic work, I take on editorial, marketing, sales and design commissions for clients in the magazine and book worlds, the most significant of which is Batch – part of the Booksellers' Association of the UK and Ireland.
Project |06
Project |06 Teaching
I have taught several courses for the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) and given talks on subjects such as 'Monsters and Marvels' and depictions of childhood in art.
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I have twice been invited to Winchester University as Jan Ellis to talk to Professor Chris Mounsey's BA group ('Literature, Sexuality and Morality') about the different sorts of sexuality explored in my fiction.