Prof. Lehfeldt joined the faculty of the History Department at Cleveland State in the fall of 1995 and received her PhD in Early Modern European History from Indiana University in 1996. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin) in 1988. Her research interests include early modern Spain, the history of women religious, and the history of women and gender. She has published extensively on the subject of female monasticism in late medieval and early modern Spain. In a series of articles and essays she has also investigated the subject of female rule in early modern Europe, focusing on the reign of Isabel of Castile. More recently she has examined the construction of codes of masculinity in seventeenth-century Spain. Prof. Lehfeldt has also directed teacher workshops and given presentations on the history of the woman suffrage movement in the United States. Currently, she is at work on two projects: a study of the gendered construction of political legitimacy in the chronicles of the reign of Isabel of Castile (r. 1474-1504) and a comparative study of the state-led reform of early modern English and Spanish convents from 1490 to 1550.
Articles
The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, edited by A.J. Cruz and M. Suzuki, Renaissance Quarterly (2010)
Convent Times: A Social History in the Foundations of Modern Spain, by A. Atienza, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2010)
Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Renaissance Quarterly (2008)
This article examines how the experience and critique of their country decline led Spaniards to...
The Queen at War: Shared Sovereignty and Gender in Representations of the Granada Campaign, Queen Isabel I of Castile : Power, Patronage, Persona (2008)
Inspired by the quincentenary of the death of Queen Isabel I of Castile, early modern...
Books
Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: the Permeable Cloister, History Department Books (2005)
Through an examination of the role of nuns and the place of convents in both...
The Black Death, History Department Books (2005)
New to the Problems in European Civilization series, this is the only text to contain...