Current Project

Winni’s forthcoming book, Making a King: Joan of Arc’s Political Theology, argues that Joan of Arc was a serious political thinker who enacted a vernacular political theology on behalf of the people.

On the first day of my class on Joan of Arc in spring 2023 we began by reading several of Joan’s letters out loud. The experience was electric. Both powerful—and revelatory. For me. And, also, I think, for the students, those reading her words and those listening. Speaking and hearing her words was arresting, in a physical sense. We were stopped in our tracks by the command in those words. It was the first time I had started the class that way. Always previously I had started with her voice from her trial. Which is also powerful. But those words come from a place of imprisonment. This book seeks to make good on the commanding presence in her letters. It attempts an articulation of Joan’s political theology and of her intervention into French politics. It centers Joan as maker of kings, not Joan as victim or martyr.