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By Mary Szymonowicz
Professor Stacy Klein is the recipient of a 2005-06 Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, one of only eleven nationwide, given by the American Council of Learned Societies. It will support Professor Klein during one academic year of residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
 Professor Klein teaches Medieval literature and culture at Rutgers, with a particular focus on Old English literature. Her forthcoming book is called Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature, and it examines representations of powerful and privileged women in surviving Old English texts. In the process of writing this book, she noticed how few sources we have from the years 700 to 1100 AD that directly address gender and erotic life for men and women who lived their lives outside of the royal courts.
Intrigued by this apparent absence of information, Professor Klein decided to undertake a new study of gender and sexuality in Anglo-Saxon culture. Her current project, “The Militancy of Gender and the Making of Sexual Difference in Anglo-Saxon Literature,” argues that these issues were written into the ways the Anglo-Saxons discussed individuals and “militancy.” For example, a common way of saying “male” in Old English was waepnedmann, which means “weaponed-person.” Her new research will explore these connections by examining literary, historical, and religious writings from this period, developing a new way of understanding Anglo-Saxons’ ideas about gender and sexuality.
Congratulations to Professor Klein for earning this prestigious award, which will give her time to work on her groundbreaking new scholarship.
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More about the Burkhardt Fellowship
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