Dissertations and Interests

The dissertations listed below are from current members of the Medieval Academy who have either completed their Ph.D.s (from 1995 onwards), or who have approved topics in progress. In the spirit of exchange and as a resource for other graduate students, medieval interests are also included as a means of generating a community amongst present and future colleagues.

If you would like your dissertation listed here, please submit your dissertation title or approved dissertation topic, school affiliation, email address, and medieval interests (optional) to Johanna Kramer (jik4@cornell.edu).

If you have completed your Ph.D., be sure to let the Academy know when you get a job. Your name will appear in the annual listing in the Medieval Academy News of Post-doctoral Hires (MA@MedievalAcademy.org). Deadline for inclusion in the Fall issue is 1 August; for the Winter issue, 1 October.

Approved Dissertations in Progress

Abdullah Alger, University of Manchester (abdullah.alger-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk)
"The Rhetoric of the Exeter Book"
Interests: Old English language and literature, reception of Anglo-Saxon literature in the 19th and 20th century, palaeography, Anglo-Latin, editing and textual criticism, medieval rhetoric, J.R.R. Tolkien, book history, source studies, and humanities computing.

Anthony Adams, Univ. of Toronto (anthony.adams@utoronto.ca)
“A Study of the Background, Transmission, and Reception of the Bella Parisiacae urbis by Abbo of St Germain des Près, with Edition and Commentary”
Interests: Old and Middle English, Old Norse, Medieval Latin, Folklore, Carolingians, Scandinavia

Charlotte Bauer-Smith, Univ. of Illinois (bauersmi@uiuc.edu)
"Visual Constructions of Corporate Identity and Exempla for the University of Paris, 1200-1500"
Interests: Medieval education, artistic workshop practices, corporations, identity, heraldry and seals.

Carrie E. Benes, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (benes@ucla.edu)
"Roman Foundations: Constructing Identity in Late Medieval Italy"
Interests: Late medieval Italy, urban history, the classical tradition, book history and palaeography

Judith G. Benz, Yale Univ. (judith.benz@yale.edu)
"Funktion und Repräsentation der Artusfigur in Wolfram von Eschenbachs Parzival und Adolf Muschg's Der Rote Ritter. EIne Geschichte von Parzivâl"
Interests: 13th-century German literature; contemporary Swiss literature; kingship in the Middle Ages

Johan Bergström-Allen, Université de Fribourg (johan@britishlibrary.net)
"The Literary and Bibliographic Activities of the Carmelite Order in medieval England"
Interests: medieval religious culture, guilds and confraternities, Lollard writings, feminist and queer theory, medieval vernacular (English) writing in the British Isles, palaeography

Nancy Bowen, Claremont Graduate Univ. (nebowen@pacbell.net)
"Stringed Musical Instruments in Chaucer"
Interests: Medieval and Renaissance music, music in literature, Old English poetry, Middle English romance, medieval art, manuscript illumination, and women's studies

Cynthia Marie Canejo, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (cane@umail.ucsb.edu)
"Transforming Early Gothic Form: The Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny and Northern Burgundian Architecture"

Marie Therese Champagne, Louisiana State University (mtchamp@lsu.edu)
"The Relationship Between the Papacy and the Jews in Twelfth-century Rome: Papal Attitudes toward Biblical Judaism and Contemporary European Jewry."
Interests: Medieval History

Meredith M. Cohen, Columbia Univ. (mmc66@columbia.edu)
"The Sainte-Chapelle of Paris: Image of Authority and Locus of Identity"
Interests: Paris, the Capetians, or even more broadly 12th- and 13th-century rulers, patronage, identity politics, architecture.

Jennifer Davis, Harvard Univ. (jdavis@fas.harvard.edu)
"Imagining and Acting the King: Charlemagne and the Invention of Medieval Rulership"
Interests: Carolingian history, medieval law, medieval Italy, Charlemagne and kingship

David Defries, Ohio State Univ. (defries.2@osu.edu)
"Drogo of Saint-Winnoc: Inventing the Past in Eleventh-Century Flanders"

Pamel Dolan, New York Univ. (peldolan@yahoo.com)
"'A Tearful Protest': Pity, Suffering, and Injustice in Middle English Literature"
Interests: Theology, theodicy, the history of emotion, and 14th- and 15th-century English literature

Jennifer Edwards, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (jcedward@uiuc.edu)
"Communal Bodies: Organizing Space and Identity through the Cult of the Saints in Medieval Poitiers"

Joshua R. Eyler, University of Connecticut (joshua.eyler@uconn.edu)
"Conditioning the Soul: Spiritual Athleticism in Medieval English Theology and Literature"
Interests: Old and Middle English literature, social history, patristics, biblical exegesis

Elsa Filosa, Univ. of North Carolina (efilosa@email.unc.edu)
“De mulieribus claris: The narrative female portrait as genre”

Justine Firnhaber-Baker, Harvard University (firnhab@fas.harvard.edu)
"'Bandits sans foi ni loi': Authority and Violence in Late Medieval France"
Interests: Concepts of authority and power, the crisis of the fourteenth century, gender and cultural history, youth

Megan H. Foster-Campbell, Univ. of Illinois (mhfoster@uiuc.edu)
"'Reading' Pilgrimage: Pilgrims' Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Texts"
Interests: Illuminated manuscripts, pilgrimage, the cult of relics/reliquaries, Christine de Pizan

Ronald Ganze, Univ. of Oregon (rganze@darkwing.uoregon.edu)
"Locating the Medieval Self: Augustinian Strands and Ethical Reading Practices"
Interests: Anglo-Saxon language and literature, patristics, medieval autobiography and saints' lives, medieval theology and philosophy, Chaucer, and ethical reading practices

Bruce Gilchrist, McGill Univ. (bgilch@po-box.mcgill.ca)
"The Body and Metaphysics in Old English Literature"
Interests: Old English literature and philosophy; history of science (esp. neurology); Chaucer

Sharon K. Goetz, Univ. of California-Berkeley (goetz@att.net)
"Uses of Portable Histories in the 13th and 14th Centuries"
Interests: Old and Middle English literature, historiography, textual editing

Adina S. Goldstein, The Graduate Center, CUNY (adinasimone@att.net)
"The Tempting of Saints in Latin Narrative: England, France, and the Low Countries, 1100-1230"

Jen Gonyer-Donohue, University of Washington (jengd@u.washington.edu)
"'Naso telleth al': The Medieval Scholarly Reception of Ovidian Heroines and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women"
Interests: Chaucer and 14th century literature, Classical appropriations and mythography, historiography, gender studies, Old French literature, pedagogy

Daniel Gullo, University of Chicago (dkgullo@midway.uchicago.edu)
"Reading, Writing, and Community Formation at 15th century Montserrat"
Interests: Medieval Spanish kingdoms, medieval monasticism and education

Ann Higgins, University of Massachusetts Amherst (higgins@vgernet.net)
"The Mark of the Hero: Language, Identity and the Middle English Romance"
Interests: Middle English romance; manuscripts; issues relating to translation; classical influences on medieval literature.

Patrick Hornbeck, Oxford University (patrick.hornbeck@st-cross.oxford.ac.uk)
"The Evolution of Heresy: The Theology of English Lollard Dissent, 1380-1520"
Interests: the genesis and evolution of medieval heretical movements, especially the Lollards of fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century England

John D. Hosler, Univ. of Delaware (dysco7@hotmail.com)
"The Wars of Henry II, 1149-1189"
Interests: military, political, and religious history of England and France, 1066-1272

Elizabeth Moore Hunt, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia (ebmada@mizzou-edu)
"The Profane Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, c. 1270--1305"

Andrea Fitzgerald Jones, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (andrear@ucla.edu)
"Guys in the Woods: Medieval Outlaw Legends, Masculinity, and Nationhood"
Interests: Gender and popular culture, particularly oral culture

Shannon Gayk, Univ. of Notre Dame (sgayk@nd.edu)
“Sensible Signes": Aesthetics and Idolatry in English Religious Literature, 1370-1450”
Interests: 14th and 15th century religious writing, late medieval devotional images

Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Boston College (siemiatk@bc.edu)
"The Maccabean Martyrs in Medieval Christianity and Judaism"
Interests: Medieval Jewish-Christian relations, hagiography, devotional practices

Karolyn Kinane, Univ. of Minnesota (kina0008@umn.edu)
"Education and Imitation in Early English Saints' Lives"
Interests: Old and Middle English saints' lives, iconography, medieval education

Johanna Kramer, Cornell Univ. (jik4@cornell.edu)
"From Sacred Earth to Celestial Spheres: Studies in the Iconography and Symbolism of Space in Old English Poetry."
Interests: Old English and other Germanic languages and literatures, Anglo-Saxon religious writings, popular religion, Germanic folklore, patristics, hagiography, medieval Latin language and literature

Ilana Krug, Univ. of Toronto (ikrug@chass.utoronto.ca)
"Royal Prerogative Gone Astray: The Social and Economic Impact of Purveyance on the English Peasantry at the Beginning of the Hundred Years War."
Interests: Fourteenth century English social and economic history; impact of war, taxation, natural disasters and corruption on the peasantry; military technology; complaint and "evils of the times" literature; East Anglian school of manuscript illumination; plague iconography and cult of plague saints.

Aden Kumler, Harvard Univ. (kumler@fas.harvard.edu)
"Visual Translation, Visible Theology: Illuminated Devotional Literature in France And England (1200-1400)"
Interests: Theology, medieval translation theory, medieval exegetical literature, the Master of the Coronation of Charles VI, salvation history; Trinitarian visions, Translatio studii et imperii

Joshua Levy, New York Univ. (JLL222@world.oberlin.edu)
"Sefer Milhamot Hashem, Chapter Eleven: The Earliest Jewish Critique of the New Testament"
Interests: Jewish-Christian relations, Jewish-Christian polemics, crusades, church legislation towards the Jews

Rebekah Long, Duke University (raw9@duke.edu)
"Apocalypse and Memory in Pearl"
Interests: Apocalypse iconography, scriptural paraphrase, Shakespearean drama and gender; 19th and 20th century forms of medievalism, especially the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien; visual culture and film theory; ordinary language philosophy.

Cathryn Meyer, Univ. of Texas at Austin (cmeyer@mail.utexas.edu)
“Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies.”
Interests: 14th and 15th century Middle English literature, medieval theology and law, Latin and vernacular confessional manuals, gender and body theory, and subjectivity

Tara Bookataub Montague, Univ. of Oregon (tbookata@darkwing.uoregon.edu)
"Narrating Battle in the Early Medieval Germanic Tradition"

Lesley Morden, Simon Fraser University (lamorden@sfu.ca)
"How much damage did the Vikings do? An analysis of the material impact of raids by Northmen on Northern France in the ninth century" (supervisor: Paul E. Dutton)

Derek Neal, McGill University (derekneal@canada.com)
"Masculinity in Late Medieval England: Self, Body, and Society, 1350-1530"
Interests: Gender and psycholinguistic theory in historical analysis; late medieval social and demographic history; English legal history; medieval religious culture; history of sexuality; psychoanalytic theory; Middle English romance

Dana M. Oswald, Ohio State Univ. (oswald.29@osu.edu)
"Indecent Bodies: Gender and the Monstrous in Medieval Literature"

Mark O’Tool, Univ. of California at Santa Barbara (motool@umail.ucsb.edu)
"Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris: Life at the Quinze-Vingts, 1250-1500."
Interests: disability, medieval hospitals, poverty and charity, lay spirituality, urban development (esp. Paris), royal patronage, medieval drama, communal identity.

Paul J. Patterson, University of Notre Dame, (patterson.30@nd.edu)
"A Mirror to Devout People: An Edition with Commentary"
Interests: Old and Middle English, book history, paleography, textual criticism, and lay religious literary practices

Nicholas Paul, Cambridge University (nlp23@cam.ac.uk)
"Crusade and family memory before 1225"
Interests: historiography, memory, and the crusades in the twelfth century.

Kimm Perkins, Univ. of Glasgow (kimm5466@yahoo.com)
“Religious Women and Their Communities in Medieval Scotland, 1100-1600”

Janine Larmon Peterson, Indiana University (janipete@indiana.edu)
"The Pseudo-Saint, the Inquisitor, and the Local Community in Northern Italy, 1250-1400"
Interests: sanctity and heresy, gender, Italian communes, analytical theory, identity

Fred Poling, The Catholic University of America (fpoling@hotmail.com)
"Villagers in Court: the hierarchies of rural life in later medieval England"
Interests: Medieval England, Social History, Canon Law

Kevin R Poole, Ohio State University (poole.78@osu.edu)
"Visualizing the Apocalypse: Image and Narration in the Morgan Beatus Comentario al Apocalipsis, ms. 644, from 926 AD." (supervisor: Vicente Cantarino)
Interests: religious and monastic literature and culture, the medieval short story, Christian-Muslim relations in Medieval Spain, visual imagery of the Middle Ages, and historical linguistics of the Romance languages

Jennifer A. Price, Univ. of Washington (japrice@u.washington.edu)
“Crusaders and their Vows, 1095-1350”

Christopher Roman, Univ. of Alabama (christopher.roman@ua.edu)
"The Spiritual Family: Domestic Metaphors of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe"
Interests: mysticism, women writers, gender studies

Anna Russakoff, New York Univ. (adr207@nyu.edu)
“Imaging the Miraculous: Les Miracles de Notre-Dame, Paris BnF n.acq.fr. 24541”
Interests: illuminated manuscripts (especially French, 13th and 14th centuries), iconography, image-text relationships, royal patronage, female patronage

Mike Ryan, University of Minnesota (ryan0223@umn.edu)
"That the Truth May Be Known: Prophesy & Society in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon"
Interests: Medieval Iberian social & cultural History

John T. Sebastian, Cornell Univ. (jts29@cornell.edu)
“A Religion of Their Own: Pedagogy, Piety, and Performance in Late- Medieval East Anglia”
Interests: Middle English literature (especially religious prose and drama), Franciscan spirituality, mysticism, manuscript reception and transmission, medieval music

Nhora Lucia Serrano, Univ. of Wisconsin (nserrano@students.wisc.edu)
"Medieval and Early Modern images of Mary: Inventing Empire and Performing History"
Interests: Medieval and early modern Spanish, French, and Italian literatures, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, political writings, women's writings and gender studies, epic poetry, literary and aesthetic theory, theology

Catherine Shepherd, Univ. of Bristol (cs0024@bristol.ac.uk)
“The precincts of tenth century English monastic houses influenced by St. Oswald”

Jennifer Speed, Fordham Univ. (jmspeed@earthlink.net)
"The Politics of Emotion in Thirteenth-Century Iberia"
Interests: Iberia, especially the Crown of Aragon; legal history; vernacular chronicles

Kathryn Kelsey Staples, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (kelseykj@umn.edu)
"Daughters of London: Inheritance Practice in Late Medieval London"

Karl Steel, Columbia University (kts15@columbia.edu)
"Eating and Not Eating Meat in the Middle Ages."
Interests: Middle English and Old and Middle French Literature, Scriptural Exegesis, Medieval Natural History, History of Anti-Semitism.

Myra Struckmeyer, Univ. of North Carolina (struckme@email.unc.edu)
"The Female Hospitallers in the High Middle Ages"
Interests: Military orders, crusades, monasticism, history of women, and gender studies

Margaret Swezey, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (mfswezey@email.unc.edu)
"The Making of Marriage in Middle English Romances"

Renee Ward, Univ. of Alberta (rmward@ualberta.ca)
“Violence, Identity and Change: The Social Function of Shape Shifting Narratives”
Interests: shape-shifting/ers, medieval and modern fantasy literature, medievalisms, medieval women, manuscript studies

Joshua A. Westgard, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (westgard@email.unc.edu)
"The Dissemination and Reception of the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of the Venerable Bede in Germany, c. 731-1500"
Interests: Anglo-Saxon & Anglo-Norman England, manuscript studies, medieval historical writing

Edna Ruth Yahil, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (eyahil@stanfordalumni.org)
"Outside the Walls of Paris: Law, Society, and Culture in France, 1400-1550"
Interests: Medieval and Early Modern French history; legal history; guilds and labor; cultural and social history

Completed Dissertations: 1995-present

Frances A. Altvater, Boston University (altvater@bu.edu)
"In Fonte Renatus. The Iconography and Context of Twelfth-Century baptismal Fonts in England" Ph.D. received April, 2003

Jane Beal, Univ. of California (jbeal@ucdavis.edu).
"John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon: Authority and Vernacular Translation in Late-Medieval England"
Interests: Middle English prose and poetry, the Pearl-Poet, the Bible in the Middle Ages Ph.D. received June 2002

Barbara Bordalejo, New York University (bb268@nyu.edu)
"The Phylogeny of the Order in the Canterbury Tales" Ph.D. received May 2003

Barbara Bordalejo, De Montfort University (bbordalejo@dmu.ac.uk)
"The Manuscript Source of Caxton's Second Edition of the Canterbury Tales and Its Place in the Textual Tradition of the Tales" Ph.D. received July 2003

Susan J. Dudash, Univ. of Pittsburgh (sdudash@cc.usu.edu)
"Giving Voice to the People: Rhetoric, History, and Literary Representations of Social Conflict in the Late Middle Ages,"
Ph.D. received April 2003

Liam Felsen, Univ. of Oregon (lfelsen@darkwing.uorgeon.edu)
"'Disputatio puerorum': Critical Edition and Analysis"
Interests: Medieval Latin language and literature, Anglo-Saxon language and literature, textual editing, medieval education, dialogue literature, medieval theories of time, redemption theory, theology and literature

Constantina Scourtis Gaddis, University of California, Los Angeles
"The Failure of Reconciliation: The Byzantine Experience at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1438-39)." PhD received December 2004
Interests: Byzantine religious, political, intellectual and cultural history; Byzantium and Latin Europe; the Crusades.

Elina Gertsman, Boston University (glazastik@yahoo.com)
"Debeo Saltare: Theology, Performance and Reception of the Late Medieval Dance of Death."
Interests: fifteenth-century northern painting, theology, mysticism, concept of medieval death

Yvette Kisor, Faculty Fellow, University of California-Davis (ylkisor@ucdavis.edu)
"The Inner Beowulf: Theories of Structure and Composition of the Poem and their Implications for Modern Readers" Ph.D. received September 2001

Peter L. Larson, Kenyon College (visiting); (larsonp@kenyon.edu)
"Conflict and Compromise in the Late Medieval Countryside: Lords and Peasants in Durham, 1349-1430" (supervised by James Masschaele). PhD awarded, Rutgers University, May 2004.
Interests: 13th-17th century England; rural society; social and legal history; the Black Death; revolts and protest; medieval frontiers and socio-cultural interactions

Merav Mack, Cambridge University (msmack@mscc.huji.ac.il)
"The Merchant of Genoa. The Crusades, the Genoese, and the Latin East, 1187-1220s" Ph.D. received June 2003

Jennifer Marshall, Royal Holloway, Univ. of London (jmarshall1@dmu.ac.uk)
"The Manuscript Tradition of Brunetto Latini's Li Livres dou Tresor and its Italian versions" Ph.D. received January 2002

Wendy Matlock, Ohio State (matlock.5@osu.edu)
"Irreconcilable Differences: Law, Gender, and Judgment in Middle English Debate Poetry"
Interests: Middle English language, literature, and culture Ph.D. received August 2003

Janice Racine Norris, Binghamton University (hereswith@earthlink.net)
"Anglo-Saxon Religious Women Who Went to the Continent: A Group Study"
Interests: medieval religious women in England and on the Continent, Kinship Groups and Behaviors, and Convent Life including various Rules for Nuns and Episcopal Directives for Nuns' Houses. Ph.D. received May 2003

John T. Sebastian, Cornell Univ. (jts29@cornell.edu)
“A Religion of Their Own: Pedagogy, Piety, and Performance in Late- Medieval East Anglia”
Interests: Middle English literature (especially religious prose and drama), Franciscan spirituality, mysticism, manuscript reception and transmission, medieval music

Julie Towell, Wayne State University (julie.towell@wayne.edu)
"The 'Rise and Progress' of Anglo-Saxonism and English National iIdentity: Old English Literature in the Nineteenth Century" Ph.D. received May 2003

Renee R. Trilling, Univ. of Notre Dame (trilling.1@nd.edu)
"Poetic Memory: History and Aesthetics in Early Medieval England"
Interests: Old and Middle English Literature, theories of historiography, linguistics and philology, feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Frankfurt School Marxism