PUBLICATIONS
Based on primary manuscript research at the British Library, Bodleian Library, National Library of Wales, and special collections libraries in the U.S., my publications focus on book history and material culture, religious literature, and gender studies. My articles have appeared in New Medieval Literatures, the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, Medieval Feminist Forum, Medieval Sermon Studies, Notes & Queries, and Pedagogy. With Michelle M. Sauer, I am currently editing a new Companion to Sexuality in the Medieval West (expected 2024), which should become one of the standard volumes on gender and sexuality in the premodern world. We also co-edited a special issue of The Journal of Early Middle English (3.1, Spring 2021) on reclusion and materiality, which is now (Oct. 2021) being published as The Materiality of Middle English Anchoritic Devotion, the first in Arc Humanities Press’s new Early Middle English Books series.
I currently have two book-length projects in progress. The first is a critical edition of and comprehensive introduction to a previously unstudied English Catholic manuscript of medieval female saints’ lives compiled in the seventeenth century, perhaps by an English nun living on the Continent. My proposal for An Early Modern English Catholic Collection of Medieval Female Saints: A Critical Edition of Folger MS V.b.334 is currently under review by the editorial board of the Brepols series Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts. At the intersection of literary studies, book history, and the history of the emotions, my monograph—titled Tactile Affects: Materiality and Feeling in Medieval British Manuscripts—analyzes how manuscripts engage readers’ senses and emotions through materiality. As affective instruction, medieval religious literature evokes, scripts, and contains a range of emotions and associated physiological reactions (like penitence and tears) through experiences with real or imagined material objects.
For a full list of my publications and presentations, view my CV here. Several of my publications are available on my Academia.edu page.
DIGITAL MANUSCRIPT ROLLS
UPenn, MS Roll 1563: Digital Facsimile
Published June 2014. Through the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School course, “The Medieval Manuscript in the 21st Century,” taught by Will Noel and Dot Porter at the University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, I designed a digital facsimile of a devotional/prayer roll from 15th-century England. My article describing the manuscript and its texts appears in Notes & Queries 63.2 (June 2016): 196–199. Click here for more information about the manuscript and for access to all aspects of my digital project.
Emory’s Fifteenth-Century English Chronicle Roll
On February 27-28, 2018, I organized a digital editing workshop for twelve graduate student participants from across the United States; the workshop was hosted by Emory’s Rose Library and Pitts Theology Library. As part of the Digital Editing and the Medieval Manuscript Roll (DEMMR) project at Yale University, the workshop participants, the DEMMR editorial staff, and I are working on a complete digital edition of Emory’s fifteenth-century English chronicle roll (Emory University; Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library; Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Eastern and Western Manuscript Collection; Box 2, Folder 1). The roll begins with the seven days of creation and concludes with Henry V. A sixteenth-century English addition to the roll updates the genealogy to Queen Elizabeth. A zoomable image of the manuscript is now available. A video of my presentation, “Emory’s Fifteenth-Century English Chronicle Roll: Late Medieval History Writing and Sixteenth-Century Nobility,” from the March 1, 2019 symposium at Emory’s Pitts Theology Library is available here.
Yale University, Beinecke MS 410 & Osborn MS a14
As noted on my “Teaching with Material Culture” page, through my work with DEMMR, I have contributed to the following forthcoming digital editions of manuscript rolls:
- New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Beinecke MS 410, a fifteenth-century prayer and indulgence roll
- New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Osborn MS a14, a late fifteenth-century redaction of John Lydgate’s “The Kings of England sithen William the Conqueror”
MS Bodley Roll 22: The Alliterative Katherine Hymn
I am also in the process of designing a digital edition of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley Roll 22. Known as The Alliterative Katherine Hymn, the alliterative stanzaic life of St Katherine of Alexandria features a complex manuscript layout with graphic tail-rhyme, acrostics, and more. While the poem was edited in 2004 by Ruth Kennedy (EETS o.s. 321), the digital edition will allow users to view and study the remarkably consistent illumination and punctuation of this manuscript roll, which is the only known medieval alliterative text professionally written on a parchment roll. Using Mirador, I plan to tag the text of the Katherine hymn to reveal commonly occurring alliterative formulae and to direct users to similar passages in other late medieval alliterative works.