Janet Ravenscroft
Writer, editor, academic
CURRENT PROJECTS
Project |01
Project |01 Ordinary Marvels
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Below is the abstract of my chapter, 'Ordinary Marvels: the Case of Dwarf Attendants in Habsburg Spain' from the collection Giants and Dwarfs.
​An examination of a range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits sheds light on the complex and paradoxical situation of the dwarfs who belonged to the Spanish Habsburg court. A critical analysis of these portraits reveals how artists developed ways to depict people who were both objects of wonder and familiar courtiers. The images are divided into three categories of portraiture: paintings of individual dwarfs; dwarfs who appear in double portraits with their royal master or mistress; and group portraits. The focus for the latter is Las Meninas, in which Diego Velázquez depicts the royal household with the achondroplastic dwarf, Maribárbola Asquín, and the proportionate dwarf Nicolasito Pertusato. A new analysis of the double portrait of a Mexican noblewoman with her indigenous dwarf companion has intriguing connections with Las Meninas that are explored here for the first time.
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Above, right: María Luisa de Toledo e indígena, c.1670, Prado, Madrid
Project |02
Project |02 Homo-Debilis
​I was 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. (The project has now ended.)
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 |03
Project |03 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.
A review of my 'entertaining and informative study of dwarfs and the so-called "madwoman", Magdalena Ruiz' featured in in the June 2014 issue of History Today magazine.
Project |04
Project |04 VariAbilit(ies)
​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 also 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.
Project |05
Project |05 Fiction
​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, which is still in print all these years later! All the books are written under the nom-de-plume Jan Ellis.
Project |06 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