Graduate Student Work

From its inception, the French of England project has focused on graduate teaching and mentoring to promote awareness of the French of England as a scholarly field. Graduate students at Fordham and other New York City area universities (working through the New York City Medieval Studies Doctoral Consortium) have actively contributed to the FOE project in a variety of ways. They are now being joined by graduate students at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, where there is an Anglo-Norman reading group (led by Prof. Mark Ormrod) and courses in the French of England, taught by Prof. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Some are working on projects wholly devoted to topics in the French of England, while others study aspects of it from comparative or interdisciplinary perspectives, including gender.

Graduate students who have contributed editions of individual texts to: The French of England: Vernacular Literary Theory and Practice, .c1100-c.1500, eds. Delbert Russell, Nicholas Watson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Penn State Press, forthcoming):

Donna Bussell (Columbia PhD, now University of Illinois at Springfield): Prologue to Adgar's Gracial
Rebecca June (Fordham): Prologue to "The Crabhouse Register"
Brenna Mead (Columbia): Prologue and excerpt, Guillaume le clerc, Le Bestiaire divin
John Spence (Cambridge, UK): Prologue to The Mohun Chronicle
Karl Steel (Columbia): Prologue to Robert of Greatham's Miroir
Karen Trimnell (Fordham) Prologue and excerpt, Denis Piramus, La Vie seint Edmund le Rei

Publications by students who have participated in the FOE program:

Diane Auslander (History, CUNY): "Trading Saints: Irish Monenna Becomes Saxon Modwenna in Norman England," a paper at Leeds Medieval Congress in 2004 that will be published in a collection for Brepols, ed. Madeleine Gray.
Diane Auslander (History, CUNY): "Living with a Saint: Relations between an Ascetic and her Community in the Hagiography of a Composite Saint" Festschrift in honor of Penelope Johnson (forthcoming).
Diane Auslander (History, CUNY):"Victims or Martyrs: Children, Anti-Semitism and the Stress of Change in High Medieval England," Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 2005).
Karen Trimnell (English, Fordham): "'And shold have been oderwyse understond': The Disenchanting of Sir Gromer Somer Joure," Medium Aevum 71 (2002): 294-98.
Karen Trimnell (English, Fordham): "'From Heir to Heir:' Royality, Masculinity and Community in Denis Piramus's Vie de seint Edmond" in St. Edmund: Royalty, Martyrdom, Masculinity, ed. Anthony Bale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, forthcoming).

PhD theses in progress:

Diane Auslander (History, CUNY): "St. Modwenna: A Contextual Study of a Composite Saint," a contextual study of all four major hagiographies dedicated to Darerca/Monenna/Modwenna. One chapter will be devoted to the Anglo-Norman life of this saint. Diane also plans further work on the historical context of Clemence of Barking's Anglo-Norman writing on which she has already presented a paper at Kalamazoo.
Maija Birenbaum (English, Fordham): "Vengeance and Piety in the Texts of Medieval England" includes study of selected authors and texts from the Anglo-Norman Venjeance nostre seignur cycles and from texts of religious devotion in Middle English and the French of England.
Donna Bussell (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia, now at the University of Illinois at Springfield) has written on Clemence of Barking and Gui of Amiens' lives of St Catherine as part of her PhD dissertation "Straight Talk: Gender and Political Communities in Insular Literature", on virgin martyrs and political communities.
Caroline Dunn (History, Fordham): "Damsels in Distress or Partners in Crime? The Abduction of Women in Medieval England" draws on a variety of Anglo-Norman French legal texts, statutes, petitions to Parliament and the Chancellor, and manuals for lawyers, such as the Year Books, the Novae Narrationes, and The Mirror of Justices.
Andrea Lankin (previously English, Fordham, now English, University of California, Berkeley) is working on a tri-lingual PhD in C12th-13th historiography with Jennifer Miller.
Brenna Mead (English, Columbia) is continuing work on Guillaume le Clerc's Bestiaire, among other texts.
Katherine Olson (English, Columbia) is continuing work on her dissertation on violence, and will be studying texts in the Anglo-Norman collection of saints' lives known as the Campsey Manuscript.
Rebecca Slitt (History, Fordham): "Aristocratic Male Friendship in the Anglo-Norman World"
Deborah Smith-Bernstein (Comparative Literature, CUNY) is continuing her researches into the cult of St Faith at Horsham St Faith in Norfolk and especially the role of the Anglo-Norman life of the saint.
Karl Steel (English, Columbia) is continuing a tri-lingual PhD on the cultural, social and political aspects of meat and meat-eating in the Middle Ages.
Karen Trimnell (English, Fordham): "The Business of Romance: Chivalry, Clerisy and Power in Insular Romance," a study of selected romances in the French and Middle English of England and Scotland.

MA theses completed or in progress:

Denise Griggs (Fordham, 2003): "History and Romance in Medieval Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale f. fr. 1450"
Andrea Lankin (Fordham, 2003): "Prelate, Lady, Jew: Two Letters Connecting Three Groups in Thirteenth-Century England"
Margarita Lopez (York, in progress): "Thirteenth-Century Spiritual Eroticism in Saluz e solaz"
Grace Woutersz (York, in progress): 'The Anglo-Norman Life of Edmund of Canterbury"

Several students have also given talks on French of England topics at scholarly conferences, including the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, the Haskins Society, and the Annual Conference of the NYC Medieval Studies Doctoral Consortium.