by Kedron Thomas

One Vanderbilt professor recently made her grand entrance into the world of children's fiction writing through the publication of her first novel, the story of a young princess caught in a web of power and betrayal.

Tracy Barrett, senior lecturer in the Department of French and Italian, whose primary research is in medieval Italian literature, published her first fiction novel for young adults in June 1999. The novel, titled Anna of Byzantium, was born out of research Barrett conducted through a summer study grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been met with positive reviews. She continues to study women from the Middle Ages who wrote at a time when education greatly differed for men and women, and outlets for female voices were limited.

The novel follows Anna Comnena, princess of the Byzantine Empire, through her adolescent struggles to regain the throne once promised her by her royal father, but instead passed on to her younger brother. Barrett said that the story, though set in 11th-century Constantinople, deals with essential human emotions and youthful passions while detailing one woman's struggle for recognition.

While women in the Middle Ages were denied equal status with men, Barrett said that Anna's powerful role in the Byzantine Empire was not entirely unusual. Women residing in this region during the Middle Ages "were veiled in public, lived in different areas from the men and ate at different tables," said Barrett, "but on the other hand, in the very upper classes, especially the royal family, the women wielded an awful lot of power."

In fact, when Anna's father would leave to oversee political or military affairs, the empire was left in the hands of his mother and an imperial edict would be drawn up to grant her full control over all royal matters. Barrett said that Anna's mother was important in a much more traditional way. "As the head of the household, she could determine who could see her husband, which meant she had huge amounts of power because if she supported a certain political party, she only let in those people," Barrett explained. In general, however, women were "much less important in the political sphere, and the religious sphere, and economics and just about any aspect you can think of" in most of Europe during the Middle Ages.

Barrett's research allowed her to uncover several texts from female wri ters of the medieval period, texts that have gone unnoticed for several reasons.

"The easy answer is 'sexism'," said Barrett, "but the less easy answer is that women received a much different education. Women were not exposed to the big literature of the day: the theological, the philosophical, so they had to invent their own literature. The genres in which women did write a lot are just now becoming popular, because people are now more interested in social history: autobiographies, letters on many different topics and mystical literature," in which many women recorded visions and signs.

Barrett's interest in children's literature began in 1975, when she published a collection of short stories in the educational series, The Reading Works. After settling into Vanderbilt's Department of French and Italian, she looked for a new opportunity to work in publishing and was approached with an offer from The Millbrook Press. Barrett then published a number of nonfiction works for juveniles, including a Nashville entertainment guide for children and a book detailing another historical period, entitled Growing Up in Colonial America.

Besides working on a new novel, which will focus on another medieval princess who penned her experiences, and teaching several Italian and women's studies courses, Barrett will be introducing a freshmen seminar in the spring on children's literature. "The importance of children's literature is the same as the importance of any other literature," Barrett said. "So much of what we read as children determines who we are, and much of who we are comes from books our parents and grandparents read, because we're still reading them. It's a way that our culture gets passed on that we don't even notice, and I think there are some important things going on in children's literature."

The course will discuss book banning and censorship, as well as the award system for children's books, and will examine how these conflicting selection processes heavily determine what children read. Students will focus on 20th-century English and American literature, examining and discussing works such as Peter Rabbit and Charlotte's Web, as well as series books from the Harry Potter, Dr. Seuss and Nancy Drew collections.

Barrett is now actively involved in several children's authors' organizations, currently serving as Regional Director for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the largest writers' group in the U.S. Her novel, Anna of Byzantium, has been named a Booklist Editor's Choice title, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and a Blue Ribbon Book by the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. The novel, published by Delacourte Press, is available at most area bookstores and can be purchased through several Web retailers.