Rethinking the Legacies of Marian Maternity

This introductory article situates the topic of medieval Marian maternity within our contemporary moment in the 2020s. It positions its readings of sections of John Mandeville’s Travels and some Marian miracle stories alongside, for example, the use of Marian iconography in the Black Lives Matter movement and the Marian institutions at the center of governmental inquiries into institutional cultures in Canadian residential schools and Irish mother and baby homes. The article cluster in this issue emerges from an event held remotely in 2021 to respond to Clare Monagle’s Scholastic Affect: Gender, Maternity and the History of Emotions (2020).