Legenda
In LEGENDA, bestselling historian Professor Janina Ramirez peels back the layers of time to reveal how the identities of women have been co-opted by those intent on crafting national identities. Their names are well-known, and summaries of their achievements have been recited in classrooms for decades, but medieval women like Joan of Arc, Lady Godiva and Isabella of Castile have been misrepresented, their stories twisted and weaponised. Meanwhile, ground-breaking 18th and 19th-century women who blazed a trail through revolutionary Europe have been forgotten, their legacies too easily dismissed or ignored.Questioning established narratives and searching for the real women behind the legends, Ramirez interrogates what defines a nation and who gets to build it, shining a light on how history is so often hijacked to serve the ideological and political interests of the present.
Janina Ramirez
Dr Janina Ramirez is a lecturer, researcher, author and broadcaster. She specialises in interpreting symbols, medieval art, and examining visual culture in an interdisciplinary manner. Following a degree in English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, Nina completed her Masters and PhD at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York on the Symbolic Life of Birds in Anglo-Saxon England.
Janina has taught at York, Warwick and Winchester Universities, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and was Course Director for the Undergraduate Certificate and Diploma in History of Art at the Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University.
