Overview
My work engages trans and disability studies to explore questions of the body in Middle English romance. I am especially interested in how bodies exist at the intersection of transness and disability, and how each theory of the body might inform the other.
My dissertation, “Trans and Disabled Specula in the Middle Ages,” asks how we might speculate medieval and modern identities by examining pairs, doubles, and mirror images in romance. In it, I argue for a medieval studies that is responsive to modern theories of transness and disability in conversation with one another, emphasizing the role the body plays (or sometimes does not play) in how identity and embodiment were and are constructed. My dissertation includes readings of the Middle English Floris and Blanchefleur, Eger and Grime, Troilus and Criseyde, and Amis and Amiloun, amongst a host of other medieval objects across genres.
In my free time, I like to read sad novels and spend time with my very chatty cat.
Research Focus
• Middle English Romance
• Disability Studies
• Trans theory
Courses Taught
• MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: Medieval Crossdressings
• MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: Life and Dying
Publications
With Sarah LaVoy-Brunette. “Settler Fantasies and Queer Disruptions: A Nonbinary Reading of Gerald’s Wolves,” invited contribution to “Medieval Trans Natures,” ed. Aylin Malcolm and Nat Rivkin. Special Issue, Medieval Ecocriticisms 4 (2024): 17-38.