Micheline White

Biography

Micheline White is an Associate Professor in the College of the Humanities and the Department of English. She began teaching at Carleton as an Assistant Professor in 1998. She completed a B.A. (honours) in English Literature at the University of Toronto in 1989 and then moved to Aomori, Japan, where she taught English at a Japanese High-school for a year. She received an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Ottawa in 1992 and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Loyola University Chicago in May 1998. Her main field of study is English Renaissance literature, and she is particularly interested in women’s writing and Reformation history. She has published several recent articles on Katherine Parr.

Research Interests

• Katherine Parr
• Sixteenth and seventeenth-century religious writing
• Women’s writing and literary networks
• Reformation studies
• Digital Humanities

2022-2023 Courses

HUMS 3000A: Culture and Imagination (F/W)
HUMS 4902A/ENGL 4301A/ENGL 5303F:  Tudor Queens: Sex, Power, and Writing in the Lives of Katherine Parr, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots (F)
DIGH 3001B/ENGL 3401A:  The Book in the Digital Age (W)

Media Interviews About Katherine Parr

Micheline White speaks to Peter Robb about Katherine Parr, Thomas Tallis, and Alamire.

Micheline White speaks to Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry about her Research on “How Two Queens Revolutionized the Book of Common Prayer.”

Interview about Katherine Parr in French with Daniel Mathieu of Radio-Canada for “les voies de retour”:
(go to 15:50)

Micheline White speaks to the Anglican Communion News Service:

Jon Brownlee discusses Micheline White’s research on Katherine Parr.

Honors and Awards Since 2011

SSHRC Insight Development Grant:  “Elite Tudor Women’s Prayer Books as Material, Devotional, and Socio-Political Artefacts.”  Tenure: June 2019-June 2023.

Carleton Research Development Grant, July 2015-July 2016. Title: “The Political Activism of Queen Katherine Parr ”

FASS Teaching Award, 2015

FASS Research Award, 2012-2013

SSHRCC Standard Research Grant  2011-2014

Edited Books

Early Modern Women’s Bookscapes: Reading, Ownership, Circulation. Eds. Leah Knight, Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.

Micheline White, ed. English Women, Religion, and Textual production, 1500-1625. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2011.

Micheline White, ed. Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England: Anne Lock, Isabella Whitney, and Aemilia Lanyer. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2009.

Selected Recent Publications

“Katherine Parr’s Giftbooks, Henry VIII’s Marginalia, and the Display of Royal Power and Piety,” Renaissance Quarterly 76 (2023): 39-83.

“Katherine Parr: Wartime Consort and Author,” in English Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty, ed. Aidan Norrie. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp.139-59.

“Katherine Parr (1512–1548), Protestant Queen, Author, and Influencer” in Women Reformers: Protestant Voices in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kirsi I. Stjerna. Fortress Press, 2022, pp. 141-50.

“Complaining for and about Henry VIII: Katherine Parr and Royal Religious Complaint,” in Early Modern Women’s Complaint: Gender, Form, and Politics, eds. Sarah C.E. Ross and Rosalind Smith. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 47-65.

“Katherine Parr, Translation, and the Dissemination of Erasmus’s Views on War and Peace,” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Reforme 43.2 (2020): 67­-91.

“Katherine Parr’s Marginalia: Putting the Wisdom of Chrysostom and Solomon into Practice,” in Early Modern Women’s Bookscapes: Reading, Ownership, Circulation. Eds.Leah Knight, Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018, pp. 21-42.

“Women in Worship: Continuity and Change in the Prayers of Elizabeth Tyrwhit and Frances Aburgavenny” in A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018, 170-185.

“Katherine Parr, Henry VIII, and Royal Literary Collaboration,” in Gender, Authorship and Early Modern Women’s Collaboration, ed. Patricia Pender.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 23-46.

“The Psalms, War, and Royal Iconography: Katherine Parr’s Psalms or Prayers (1544) and Henry VIII as David.” Renaissance Studies 29.4 (Sept 2015): 554-575.

“Pray for the Monarch: The surprising contributions of Katherine Parr and Queen Elizabeth I to the Book of Common Prayer.” Times Literary Supplement, 3 April, 2015: 14-15.

This piece sheds new light on the historical origins of the “Prayer for the Queen’s Majesty,” a prayer that appeared in the 1559 Anglican Book of Common Prayer and that is still used today. It demonstrates that the prayer is derived from a Latin prayer by Georg Witzel for the Holy Roman Emperor printed in 1541. It was adapted as a prayer for Henry VIII, translated by Katherine Parr, and disseminated in her 1544 Psalms or Prayers, a book of wartime prayers. Parr made fascinating modifications as she translated, enhancing Henry’s virtues and military prowess. Although 19th and early 20th-century historians noted the connection between the 1559 “Prayer for the Queen’s Majesty” and the earlier “Prayer for the King,” they were unsure of the origins of the prayer and did not openly attribute it to Parr or examine Parr’s literary skills. Parr is not mentioned at all in more recent accounts of the Book of Common Prayer. This piece also argues that the prayer was almost certainly inserted into public worship and edited in 1559 by Elizabeth I, Parr’s beloved step-daughter. The prayer appeared in Elizabeth’s Chapel Royal five months before the printing of the 1559 BCP and she had translated the prayer in her youth as a gift for her father. Elizabeth made the prayer more suited to her sex, toning down the passages about military glory and ferocity. This means that Elizabeth was likely an editor of a female-authored part of the BCP, a detail that complicates the general assumption that the prayers in the Tudor Books of Common Prayer were compiled, written, translated or edited by clergymen.

“The Perils and Possibilities of the Early Modern Book Dedication:  Anne Lock, Queen Elizabeth, and John Knox.” Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Mediavel and Early Modern Studies.  29.2 (2012): 9-27. Special issue on “Early Modern Women and Book History.”

“Dismantling Catholic Primers and Reforming Private Prayer:  Anne Lock, Hezekiah’s Song, and Psalm 50/51,” in Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, eds.  Alec Ryrie and Jessica Martin.  Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, 2012, pp. 93-113.

“Women’s Hymns in Mid-Sixteenth-Century England: Elisabeth Cruciger, Miles Coverdale, and Lady Elizabeth Tyrwhit,” ANQ: Special Issue on Women Devotional Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 24.1 (2011): 21-32.

“The Dedication and Prayers from Anne Gawdy Jenkinson’s translation of Guillaume Du Vair’s Meditations upon the Lamentations of Jeremy.” English Literary Renaissance 37 (2007): 34-46.

“Women Writers and Religious and Literary Circles in the Elizabethan West Country: Anne Dowriche, Anne Lock Prowse, Anne Lock Moyle, Elizabeth Rous, and Ursula Fulford.” Modern Philology 103.2 (2005): 187-214.

“Power Couples and Women Writers in Elizabethan England: the Public Voices of Dorcas and Richard Martin and Anne and Hugh Dowriche,” in Framing the Family: Representation and Narrative in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, eds. Diane Wolfthal and Rosalynn Voaden. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2005, 119-38.

“Tudor Women’s Writing and Congregational Singing: from the Hymn of the Unknown ‘Handmaid’ (1555) to Mary Sidney Herbert’s Psalmes (1599).” The Sidney Journal 23 (2005): 61-82.

“A Woman with Saint Peter’s Keys?: Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and the Priestly Gifts of Renaissance Women.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts  45.3 (2003):  323-41.

“Recent Studies in Women Writers of Tudor England, 1485-1603.” English Literary Renaissance 30.3 (2000): 457-93.

“Renaissance Englishwomen and Religious Translations: The Case of Anne Lock’s Of the Markes of the Children of God (1590).” English Literary Renaissance 29 (1999): 375-400.

“A Biographical Sketch of Dorcas Martin: Elizabethan Translator, Stationer, and Godly Matron.”  The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 775-92.

Recent Invited Lectures and Conference Presentations

“The Material Traces of Queen Katherine Parr’s Devotional Reading.” Conference on “Private Reading in Early Modern Devotion: Materiality, Space and Spirit.”  Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, 11-12 October, 2018.

“Anne Clifford’s Devotional Life: the Lifelong Interweaving of Private and Liturgical Prayer.” “Anne Clifford: Engagements in Culture.”  Kendal, UK, July 2018.

“Catherine Brandon, Translation, and Religious Activism.” Early Modern ‘Transformissions’: Linguistic, material, and cultural translation in England and France (c. 1470-1660). SSHRC funded conference. University of Montreal, July 2017.

Plenary talk. “The (In)Visible Queen: the Circulation of Unattributed Prayers by Katherine Parr.”  March 2017.  Galway, Ireland.  Conference on “Reception, Reputation, and Circulation in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800.”  You can listen to a podcast here on Sound Cloud.

Recent Graduate Supervisions

Meghan Newman, “A Catholic Woman and A Catholic Queen: The nuanced religious expression of Mary I in Reformation Era England.” MA Thesis. Co-supervision. Department of History. Defended September, 2021.

Bethany Pehora, “Rhetoric in the Early Imprisonment Letters of Mary Queen of Scots.”  MA Thesis. Co-supervision. Department of History. Defended September, 2021.

Amy-Lee Parent: “The Rest is Drag”: A Look at Cross-Dressing and Gender-Play in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. [MA 2018].

Jordan Plescia “Devotion and Didacticism: Elizabeth I’s Private Prayers.” [MA 2016].