Idea for MV

Lori and I met as graduate students at Indiana University South Bend and we share a similar writing style, one that sprinkles a pinch of levity on top of the typically dry and humorless academic research writing, much to the exasperation and amusement of our professors!

The idea for The Medieval Vagina emerged from my master's thesis project and a series of Facebook messages with Lori. In short, the medieval views, attitudes, and anecdote I was unearthing in my research were simply too delicious to leave buried, yet too …well, delicious…for academic writing. I wanted to draw out this information and offer it to the general public in the form of an accessible non-fiction read but I knew I couldn't do it alone. Lori has experience in both writing and publishing.

That, plus that whole similar writing style thing, made us the perfect writing partners. With encouragement from our husbands, instructors and fellow graduate students, we embarked on a journey of discovery and research to simultaneously unearth all things medieval and all things vaginal.

The fruit of this labor is The Medieval Vagina, a collection of evidence showing that, although the Middle Ages was a male-dominated era, there was no escaping the mysterious allure and frightening repulsion of this unique, multi-functional feminine organ – and that is the paradox of the vagina.  

A Wicked Book

After completing his classic, Moby Dick, Herman Melville wrote a letter to his buddy Nathaniel Hawthorne in which he commented, “I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb.”

This is exactly how I feel now that my buddy Lori and I have completed our first collaborative writing adventure, a “snarkiliscious” non-fiction book we are titling The Medieval Vagina: A Hysterical and Historical Perspective of all Things Vaginal During the Middle Ages. This experience has been a fun ride even if it hasn’t been nearly as naughty as it sounds.

Our aim with The Medieval Vagina, or the MV as we have come to call it, is to shed some light on the most feminine of body parts during one particular moment in time. This book is for the feminist. It is for the historian. It is for the medievalist. It is for the humorist. It is for the curious male.

It is for the lover of the unusual, the weird, the quirky, and the vulgar. It is for anyone who appreciates the uniquely female organ that plays a key role in progeny, pleasure, punishment and peccadillo.