Jennifer Edwards's Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers' Abbey of Sainte-Croix is an outstanding and comprehensive case study that explores the various strategies the abbesses of Sainte-Croix relied on to maintain authority and wield power over a span of nearly one thousand years.
Jennifer C. Edwards is an historian of women, gender, and religion in medieval Europe. She is Associate Professor and Chair of History at Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY, where she teaches courses in ancient and medieval history. She is associate editor of the Medieval Feminist Forum and serves on the Advisory Board of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. She holds a BA in Classics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an
MA and PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.