359 New Cabell Hall
Medieval and 16th-century literature, book culture, text and image, reader reception, authorship, patronage, and gender theory.
2011-2013 Andrew Mellon Foundation Grant for “Machaut in the Book: Representations of Authorship in Late Medieval Manuscripts.”
2010-2011 Gould Foundation Fellowship, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, North Carolina
2002 – 2003 Mellon Fellowship, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana
1997 – 1999 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University
|(University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division , 2006)|
"Rethinking the Boundaries of Patronage," Special Issue Digital Philology, (Fall 2013) Volume 2 Number 2, 145-154.
“Guerre ne sert que de torment: Remembering War in the Poetic Correspondence of Charles d’Orléans,” Commemorating Violence: The Writing of History in the Francophone Middle Ages, Noah Guynn and Zrinka Stahuljak, eds. (Boydell and Brewer, 2012).
“Reading for Authority: Portraits of Christine de Pizan and Her Readers,” Medieval Authorship: Theory and Practice, eds. Steve Partridge and Erik Kwakkel (Toronto University Press, 2012).
“De ‘l’onneur et louenge des femmes’: Les dédicaces épistolaire du Débat sur le Roman de la Rose et la réconfiguration du champ littéraire” in « Publics et publications dans les éloges collectifs de femmes à la fin du Moyen Age et sous l’Ancien Régime, » Renée-Claude Breitenstein, Special Issue, Etudes françaises 47.3 (2011), 11-28.
“The Rise of Metafiction in the Late Middle Ages,” Cambridge History of French Literature, ed. William Burgwinkle (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
“Maîtriser Ovide: Exemple d’une traduction de l’Ars Amatoria à la fin du Moyen Age,” Ovide métamorphosé : les lecteurs médiévaux d'Ovide, ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner (Presse de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2009). 33 – 43.
“Guillaume de Machaut,” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, eds. Sarah Kay and Simon Gaunt (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 109 – 122.
Reflections on Teaching
I often ask students on the first day of class what baggage they bring to the course. What do they already know about the subject? What feelings do they have toward the material? While this may appear to be a simplistic way of beginning a course on medieval literature, it is, in fact, always an enlightening way to be reminded of what my passion evokes for others – war, plagues, violence, oppression, and inequality. As much as these types of reflections do not speak to my vision of the field of medieval studies, allusions to damsels in distress and knights in shining armor are no better. And yet, these are common and shared preconceptions of the medieval period. While I don’t agree with them, I recognize them because both visions represented my own twisted understanding of the Middle Ages the first time I entered a class on medieval French (kicking and screaming, I might add).
I left that first class “converted” and have ever since been fascinated by the first 600 years of “modern” civilization. I love the opportunity to share with students my vision of the medieval period. What all students of a foreign language know is that study of another world opens up the possibility to observe and sometimes grasp an entirely different worldview. It is my belief that the study of the Middle Ages can have a similar, if not more shocking, effect. It is both familiar and foreign to Americans in particular. We have a well-packaged image of the Middle Ages and what it is said to represent. In our present society while we live daily in the midst of war and suffering, the Middle Ages has become the prime reference for all that is wrong and evil in the world. From the threat of “getting medieval” on someone from Pulp Fiction to current practices of referring to American-led wars as crusades and our enemies as coming straight from the Dark Ages, we as a society use the medieval period as a stand-in for our greatest fears.
And yet, so many of our core values, practices, and notions were shaped during the middle ages – including our concept of love, honor, identity, and nationhood as well as modern views on sexuality, the rights and obligations of power, and relations between cultures. My work as a scholar and a teacher centers on helping students not only to gain a better understanding of such a rich period in world history and literature, but to explore with them why it can be disconcerting but essential to expose and dispose of a stereotype so important to our own cultural identity today.