Director, Medieval Studies Program
Associate Professor of History

Office: Burnham, Room 306
Phone: (417) 873-7387
E-mail: swolbrin@drury.edu

Dr. Wolbrink teaches courses in women’s history and pre-modern history with emphasis on the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation. She has a special interest in social history and teaches classes on the social history of India, Western monasticism, the witch-hunts of Early Modern Europe, and Hollywood’s depiction of Joan of Arc. She also teaches senior seminar, the capstone course for the major, where students conduct primary source research, write research papers, visit local archives and conduct oral interviews with WWII veterans. Since 2004 she has been taking students to Europe for summer study abroad (Athens and Volos, 2004; Rome, 2005; Athens, Volos, Meteora, Skiathos, 2006). She hopes to see Pope John Paul II this summer in Rome!

Originally from Michigan, her graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati took her to Germany in 1997-1998 where she conducted research in the archives and libraries of Düsseldorf and Cologne. Her research focuses on medieval women and monasticism, particularly the Premonstratensian monasteries of northwestern Germany. Dr. Wolbrink has presented her research at conferences including: The American Historical Association (2005), The International Congress of Medieval Studies (2002, 1999), The Triennial Conference on the History of Women Religious (2001, 1998), the Mid-America Conference on

History (1999), and the Midwest Medieval History Conference (1997). She served as presenter and organizer for the panel “The Social Origins of Medieval Monastics” at the 1999 International Congress of Medieval Studies and for the panel “Women and Religious Orders in Medieval Germany,” at the 2005 American Historical Association. Publications include book reviews for History of Women Religious and The Medieval Review, as well as entries on Clovis and St. Benedict of Nursia for the Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Essays have also appeared on Mary Ward, a seventeenth-century teacher and reformer; Balthasar Hubmaier, a sixteenth-century reformer; and the Therigatha, an ancient women’s text considered canonical within Buddhism.

Dr. Wolbrink served as the editor for Encylopedia of World Biography: the Middle Ages, vols. 1 and 2 (Salem Press, 2005). Her article “Women and the Premonstratensian Order in Germany, 1120-1250” was published in the July 2003 issue of the Catholic Historical Review. Her essay on gender and the Premonstratensian order will appear in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (2006). Articles under project include “Premonstratensian Legislation and Contemporary Descriptions of Premonstratensian Sisters, c. 1120-1250”, “The Social Origins of Premonstratensian Sisters in Northwestern Germany,” and a book titled Premonstratensian Sisters: Family, Power, and Monastery in Northwestern Germany, 1120-1250.

Dr. Wolbrink currently serves as director of the medieval minor @ drury program as well as adviser for Phi Alpha Theta, the history honorary. She is chair of the division of Social Sciences at Drury. She invites all interested students to drop by her office to view a replica of the Bayeaux Tapestry (inside) and a postcard of the well-preserved body of St. Margherita of Cortona, a thirteenth century saint (on the door).