Dyan Elliott


Dyan Elliott is a Canadian medievalist specialising in gender and sexuality studies. She is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of History at Northwestern University, where she teaches the medieval period.

Life

Elliott was born in 1954 and was raised Anglican. Although she is no longer religious, she credited her religious upbringing for beginning her interest in church history.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1989.
Dyan Elliott’s research about "gender, sexuality, spirituality" adds levels of evaluation and understanding regarding church history, and those who were affected negatively and positively by its hierarchy and authority figures. Her work has won her several prestigious awards and fellowships in her field.
Elliott's 2020 book, The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy, explores sexual abuse in the medieval church. In 2024, Elliott spoke on "sexual abuse by clergy in the Middle Ages" at the Pontifical Gregorian University's conference "The Memory of Power and Abuse of Power".
In addition to several academic books, Elliott has also written a historical novel, A Hole in the Heavens ''.''

Awards

Source

Publications

Books

SourceSpiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages Proving Woman: Female Mysticism and Inquisitional Practice in Late Medieval Europe

Articles and chapters

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