Joan M. Ferrante

Joan Marguerite Aida Ferrante (born November 11, 1936) is an American scholar of medieval literature.

She was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. She received a bachelor of arts from Barnard College in 1958 and a master's and PhD from Columbia University in 1959 and 1962, respectively. She taught at Hunter College and Barnard, and as an instructor at Columbia, before becoming a professor at Columbia in 1966. A conference was held in 2001 on the occasion of her 65th birthday. A Festschrift titled Medieval Constructions in Gender and Identity: Essays in Honor of Joan M. Ferrante, which collected papers given at the conference, was published in 2005.

Publications The Conflict of Love and Honor: The Medieval Tristan Legend in France, Germany and Italy (1973) Guillaume d'Orange: Four Twelfth-Century Epics (1974) Woman as Image in Medieval Literature (1975) The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (1984) To the Glory of Her Sex: Women's Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (1997)