The Medieval Feminist Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. Because of the explosion of research in Women's Studies during the past two decades, scholars and students interested in women during the Middle Ages find an ever-growing flood of publications. Identifying relevant works in this mass of material is further complicated by the interdisciplinary nature of much of the scholarship. In order to help researchers find current articles and essays quickly and easily, librarians and scholars began compiling the Medieval Feminist Index (MFI) in July 1996. Books written by a single author are not indexed in MFI; for these, check library catalogs that have strong collections in medieval studies.

MFI covers over 300 journals as well as essay collections devoted in large part to topics dealing with women, sexuality, or gender. At this point the indexing for publications from 1995 and 1996 is nearing completion. There are over 1800 records in the database currently, and more than one hundred records are added every other month. We index the current year along with a backlog year, and we are now working both on 1997 and on 1994 publications. The time period covered is 450 C.E. to 1500 C.E. and the geographic area is Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Subject coverage for gender and sexuality means that articles on masculinity and male homosexuality are included. Publications in English, French, German, and Spanish are currently being indexed. Material in other languages, notably Italian, will be added in the near future.

 Web resources on medieval women.

 For more information about database development for the Web, see Databases for Medieval Studies.

 Records were last added on December 19, 1997. 

Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship	Search the Medieval Feminist Index