Professor Diane Watt
Professor of English
Qualifications: MA (Glasgow), MA (Bristol), DPhil (Oxon), FRSA
Email: d.watt@surrey.ac.uk
Phone: Work: 01483 68 3779
Room no: 01 LC 03
Further information
Biography
Diane Watt is Professor of English Literature and Head of the School of English and Languages. Diane came to the University of Surrey in 2011. She was previously Head of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. Diane works on medieval literature, women’s writing, gender and sexuality. Her books include Medieval Women’s Writing (2007), Amoral Gower (2004) and Secretaries of God (1997).
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Research Interests
• Old English Literature
• Middle English Literature
• Early Modern Literature
• Women’s Writing
• Feminist Theory
• Lesbian Studies
• Queer Theory
Other Research Activities:
Diane is general editor, with Jacqueline Murray, of the series ‘Gender in the Middle Ages’, published by Boydell and Brewer. Books in the series investigate topics concerned with medieval gender, from a literary or historical perspective.
Diane is also general editor, with Denis Renevey, of the series ‘Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages’, published by University of Wales Press. The series is interdisciplinary in nature, and is largely concerned with the religious culture of medieval Western Europe.
Diane is a member of the advisory board for British and Irish Literature for Oxford Bibliographies
Diane is a member of the Programming Committee of the annual International Medieval Congress. She is responsible for the Women’s and Gender Studies Strand.
She is a member of the Gender and Medieval Studies Steering Group.
Publications
Highlights
- .
(2013) 'The Earlierst Women's Writing? Anglo-Saxon Literary Cultures and Communities'. Taylor & Francis Women's Writing, Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/744123/
Abstract
Who were the first women writers in the English literary tradition? This question continues to preoccupy feminist scholars in the twenty-first century, but very few would look back to the centuries before the Norman invasions in order to find the answer. Focusing on the religious houses of Ely and Whitby in the seventh and early eighth centuries this article reviews some of the surviving evidence of the first monastic women’s writing. Looking for traces of early texts by women, it re-examines the lives of the Abbesses Æthelthryth of Ely and Hild of Whitby found in the fourth book of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, alongside the account of Hild found in the Old English Martyrology, and, more speculatively, it reconsiders the case for women’s involvement in the production of the anonymous first Life of Gregory the Great. This article argues that texts by women were ‘overwritten’ by the earliest male monastic writers, a process reinforced by later scholarship. By focusing on texts associated with religious houses ruled by women, and by seeing them as the productions not of individuals but of communities, it is possible to get a fuller and more balanced understanding of women’s writing in this earliest period of English literary history.
- . (2012) 'Lost Books: Abbess Hildelith and the Literary Culture of Barking Abbey.'. Department of English, University of English Philological Quarterly: devoted to scholarly investigation of the classical and modern languages and literatures, 91, pp. 1-22.
- .
(2012) The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500. Great Britain : Palgrave Macmillan 1Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/719260/
Abstract
This volume focuses on a period of literary history that is often marginalized in accounts of women’s writing in English. It argues that the picture of women’s writing in Britain in the period before 1500 is a very complex one. Britain was, then as now, multicultural and multilingual. At the same time, Britain enjoyed close links to the continent. These factors have to be taken into account in looking at the earliest women’s writing. Works in Latin and French need to be considered alongside works translated into English and/or circulated in England. Furthermore a wide range of genres of writing not normally thought of as ‘literary’ has to be examined. Equally important in considering women’s writing in this period are the dismantling of the boundaries between translation and authorship; a widening of focus to include anonymous and collaborative authorship; and a wider consideration of women’s engagement with literary production and culture.
- .
(2011) The Lesbian Premodern. New York : Palgrave MacMillan Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/342988/
Abstract
When has using the term “lesbian” not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies at the heart of this important new collection of essays. The Lesbian Premodern engages key scholars in the field of lesbian studies and queer theory in an innovative conversation in print. Transgressing traditional period boundaries The Lesbian Premodern challenges those interested primarily in contemporary lesbian theory, history and literature to pay full attention to significant and often overlooked theoretical, empirical and textual work on female same-sex desire and identity in premodern cultures. This provocative and innovative collective book offers a radical new methodology for writing lesbian history, geography, literary criticism and theory.
- .
(2007) Medieval women's writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100-1500. Cambridge : Polity Press Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595523/
Abstract
Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham. Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: Who were the first women authors in the English canon? What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages? What do we mean by authorship? How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history? Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods.
- .
(2003) Amoral Gower. Language, Sex, and Politics. Mineapolis / London : University of Minnesota Press 38Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595525/
Abstract
“Moral Gower” he was called by friend and sometime rival Geoffrey Chaucer, and his “Confessio Amantis” has been viewed as an uncomplicated analysis of the universe, combining erotic narratives with ethical guidance and political commentary. Diane Watt offers the first sustained reading of John Gower’s “Confessio” to argue that this early vernacular text offers no real solutions to the ethical problems it raises—and in fact actively encourages perverse readings. Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. How, she asks, is Gower’s “Confessio” related to contemporary controversies over vernacular translation and debates about language politics? How is Gower’s treatment of rhetoric and language gendered and sexualized, and what bearing does this have on the ethical and political structure of the text? What is the relationship between the erotic, ethical, and political sections of “Confessio Amantis”? Watt demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland at the same time that she contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism.
- . (1997) Secretaries of God.. Suffolk : D.S. Brewer
Journal articles
- .
(2013) 'The Earlierst Women's Writing? Anglo-Saxon Literary Cultures and Communities'. Taylor & Francis Women's Writing, Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/744123/
Abstract
Who were the first women writers in the English literary tradition? This question continues to preoccupy feminist scholars in the twenty-first century, but very few would look back to the centuries before the Norman invasions in order to find the answer. Focusing on the religious houses of Ely and Whitby in the seventh and early eighth centuries this article reviews some of the surviving evidence of the first monastic women’s writing. Looking for traces of early texts by women, it re-examines the lives of the Abbesses Æthelthryth of Ely and Hild of Whitby found in the fourth book of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, alongside the account of Hild found in the Old English Martyrology, and, more speculatively, it reconsiders the case for women’s involvement in the production of the anonymous first Life of Gregory the Great. This article argues that texts by women were ‘overwritten’ by the earliest male monastic writers, a process reinforced by later scholarship. By focusing on texts associated with religious houses ruled by women, and by seeing them as the productions not of individuals but of communities, it is possible to get a fuller and more balanced understanding of women’s writing in this earliest period of English literary history.
- . (2012) 'Lost Books: Abbess Hildelith and the Literary Culture of Barking Abbey.'. Department of English, University of English Philological Quarterly: devoted to scholarly investigation of the classical and modern languages and literatures, 91, pp. 1-22.
- .
(2010) 'Why men still aren't enough'. Duke University Press GLQ: a journal of lesbian and gay studies, 16 (3), pp. 451-464.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/216659/
- . (2006) 'Women of God and arms: Female spirituality and political conflict, 1380-1600.'. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 111, pp. 549-549.
- . (2002) 'Oedipus, Apollonius, and Richard II: Sex and Politics in Book 8 of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis'. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 24, pp. 181-208.
- .
(2001) 'Sins of Omission: Transgressive Genders, Subversive Sexualities, and Confessional
Silences in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis'. Maney Publishing Exemplaria: a journal of theory in medieval and Renaissance studies, 13 (2), pp. 529-551.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/231715/
- . (1999) 'A Note on John Dering’s Tract de Duplice Spiritu'. Notes and Queries: for readers and writers, collectors and librarians, 244, pp. 326-328.
- . (1999) '‘Literary Genealogy, Virile Rhetoric and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis,’'. Philological Quarterly: devoted to scholarly investigation of the classical and modern languages and literatures, 78, pp. 387-413.
- . (1998) 'Religion, Witchcraft and Writing: Women in the Reformation and Renaissance’'. Reformation, 3, pp. 359-369.
- . (1998) '‘Behaving Like a Man? Incest, Lesbian Desire and Gender Play in Yde et Olive and its Adaptations’'. Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon Comparative Literature, 50 (4), pp. 265-285.
- . (1997) '‘Reconstructing the Word: The Prophecies of Elizabeth Barton,’'. Renaissance Quarterly, 50, pp. 132-159.
- . (1996) 'The Posthumous Reputation of the Holy Maid of Kent'. Recusant History, 23, pp. 148-158.
- . (1994) '‘Nationalism in Barbour’s Bruce,’'. Parergon, n.s. 12, pp. 89-107.
Books
- .
(2012) The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500. Great Britain : Palgrave Macmillan 1Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/719260/
Abstract
This volume focuses on a period of literary history that is often marginalized in accounts of women’s writing in English. It argues that the picture of women’s writing in Britain in the period before 1500 is a very complex one. Britain was, then as now, multicultural and multilingual. At the same time, Britain enjoyed close links to the continent. These factors have to be taken into account in looking at the earliest women’s writing. Works in Latin and French need to be considered alongside works translated into English and/or circulated in England. Furthermore a wide range of genres of writing not normally thought of as ‘literary’ has to be examined. Equally important in considering women’s writing in this period are the dismantling of the boundaries between translation and authorship; a widening of focus to include anonymous and collaborative authorship; and a wider consideration of women’s engagement with literary production and culture.
- .
(2011) The Lesbian Premodern. New York : Palgrave MacMillan Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/342988/
Abstract
When has using the term “lesbian” not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies at the heart of this important new collection of essays. The Lesbian Premodern engages key scholars in the field of lesbian studies and queer theory in an innovative conversation in print. Transgressing traditional period boundaries The Lesbian Premodern challenges those interested primarily in contemporary lesbian theory, history and literature to pay full attention to significant and often overlooked theoretical, empirical and textual work on female same-sex desire and identity in premodern cultures. This provocative and innovative collective book offers a radical new methodology for writing lesbian history, geography, literary criticism and theory.
- .
(2007) Medieval women's writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100-1500. Cambridge : Polity Press Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595523/
Abstract
Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham. Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: Who were the first women authors in the English canon? What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages? What do we mean by authorship? How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history? Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods.
- .
(2004) The Paston women: Selected letters. Rochester : DS Brewer Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595524/
Abstract
The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence, in their case especially rich in letters from the women of the family. Clandestine love affairs, secret marriages, violent family rows, bickering with neighbours, battles and sieges, threats of murder and kidnapping, fears of plague: these are just some of the topics discussed in the letters of the Paston women. Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.
- .
(2003) Amoral Gower. Language, Sex, and Politics. Mineapolis / London : University of Minnesota Press 38Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595525/
Abstract
“Moral Gower” he was called by friend and sometime rival Geoffrey Chaucer, and his “Confessio Amantis” has been viewed as an uncomplicated analysis of the universe, combining erotic narratives with ethical guidance and political commentary. Diane Watt offers the first sustained reading of John Gower’s “Confessio” to argue that this early vernacular text offers no real solutions to the ethical problems it raises—and in fact actively encourages perverse readings. Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. How, she asks, is Gower’s “Confessio” related to contemporary controversies over vernacular translation and debates about language politics? How is Gower’s treatment of rhetoric and language gendered and sexualized, and what bearing does this have on the ethical and political structure of the text? What is the relationship between the erotic, ethical, and political sections of “Confessio Amantis”? Watt demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland at the same time that she contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism.
- .
(2002) The arts of 17th-century science. Representations of the Natural World in European and North American Culture. Ashgate Pub Ltd Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595526/
Abstract
Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation have their origins in the seventeenth century. However, 'new science' did not simply or uniformly replace earlier beliefs about the workings of the natural world, but entered into competition with them. It is this complex process of competition and negotiation concerning ways of seeing the natural world that is charted by the essays in this book. The collection traces the many overlaps between 'literary' and 'scientific' discourses as writers in this period attempted both to understand imaginatively and empirically the workings of the natural world, and shows that a discrete separation between such discourses and spheres is untenable. The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.
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(2001) Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Boydell & Brewer Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595527/
Abstract
Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in her study of women's prophecy, following the female experience from medieval sainthood to radical Protestantism. The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. The strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of the their times: the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.
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(2000) De-centring sexualities. Politics and representations beyond the metropolis. London : Routlegde, Taylor & Francis Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595528/
Abstract
This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are: * a lesbian in rural England * sexual life in rural Wales * sexuality in rural South Africa * scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics * nature and homosexuality in literature * Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space * how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.
- . (1997) Secretaries of God.. Suffolk : D.S. Brewer
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(1997) Medieval women in their communities. Cardiff : University of Wales Press Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/595529/
Abstract
The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this volume which brings together a body of original research by historians and literary scholars and disucsses a variety of such communities in France, Germany and Wales. The perspective is also broadened to include the lives of women in relation to the local community in places as far apart as East Anglia and southern Italy.
Book chapters
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(2012) 'Literature in Pieces: female sanctity and the relics of early women’s writing (500-1150)'. in Lees CA (ed.) The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature
Cambridge University Press Article number 14 Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/712369/
- . (2012) 'Margery Kempe'. in McAvoy LH, Watt D (eds.) The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Palgrave Mcmillan I, pp. 232-240.
- . (2011) 'Writing a History of Women's Writing from 700 to 1500'. in McAvoy LH, Watt D (eds.) The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Great Britain : Palgrave Macmillan
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(2011) 'Age and Desire in the Old English Mary of Egypt: A Queerer Time and Place?'. in Niebrzydowski S (ed.) Middle-Aged Women in the Middle Ages
Cambridge : DS Brewer Article number 6 , pp. 53-68.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/712345/
Abstract
This article offers a reading of the Life of Mary of Egypt that addresses issues of time, age, gender and desire within this Old English saints’ life. Our concerns are not, however, limited to these themes within a specific early medieval text but they extend to the discipline of medieval literary studies more widely. Our work on this text, separately and collectively, prompts us to examine broader critical issues concerning temporality, gender, sexuality and medieval studies. We have a dual focus: we offer a rethinking of the Life of Mary of Egypt and we demonstrate how that rethinking has benefitted from our collaborative efforts to understand core questions about the field we study as scholars of Anglo-Saxon and later Medieval Studies. When were the Middle Ages? Whose Middle Ages are they? Are they the Middle Ages of Anglo-Saxonists as well? At what point do the Middle Ages of Anglo-Saxonists and Medievalists meet?
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(2010) 'Authorizing Female Piety'. in Treharne EM, Walker G, Green W (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English
Oxford : Oxford University Press , pp. 240-255.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/712451/
Abstract
This essay explores aspects of female religious authority in England from the Anglo-Saxon period until the end of the Middle Ages. It addresses questions of theory and methodology and offer new analyses of some familiar medieval women visionaries. One key problem in any consideration of women and piety that extends across several hundred years is the imposition of a teleology or narrative of decline. Aristocratic religious women certainly appeared to have more power in the period before the Norman Conquest. Another difficulty is the absence of a continuous tradition of women’s religious writing. How familiar were the writers of English devotional texts by, for, or about women in the later Middle Ages with earlier models of female piety and their visions and writings? In exploring and negotiating these issues, this essay will look at a range of pious women from different periods, starting with the narratives of holy women and nuns in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (especially the nuns of Barking, Etheldreda or ᴁthelthryth, and Hild), moving on to Christina of Markyate in the twelfth century, and finishing with Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the anonymous visionary (probably recluse) of Winchester responsible for the early fifteenth-century ‘Revelation of Purgatory’. Important themes to be explored include the centrality of visions of dying, death and the afterlife, and their significance in the authorizing of female piety and in the construction of communities of devout women
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(2009) 'John Gower'. in Scanlon L (ed.) The Cambridge companion to medieval English literature, 1100-1500
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , pp. 153-164.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/712452/
- . (2008) 'St Julian of the Apocalypse'. in McAvoy LH (ed.) A companion to Julian of Norwich DS Brewer , pp. 64-74.
- . (2006) 'Margery Kempe's Overseas Pilgrimages'. in Lees CA, Overing GR (eds.) A place to believe in Pennsylvania State Univ Pr
- . (2004) 'Margery Kempe and the Prophetic Tradition'. in Arnold J, Lewis KJ (eds.) A companion to The book of Margery Kempe Ds Brewer , pp. 145-160.
- . (2004) 'Critics, Communities and Compassionate Criticism: Learning from The Book of Margery Kempe'. in D'Arcens L, Ruys JF (eds.) Maistresse of my wit Brepols Publishers , pp. 191-210.
- . (2004) 'Gender and Sexuality'. in Echard S (ed.) A companion to Gower Ds Brewer , pp. 197-213.
- . (2002) 'Consuming Passions in Book 8 of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis'. in McAvoy LH, Walters T (eds.) Consuming narratives University Of Wales Press , pp. 28-41.
- . (2001) 'Medieval Millenarianism and Prophecy'. in Hunt S (ed.) Christian millenarianism C. Hurst & Co. Publishers , pp. 88-97.
- . (1997) 'Read My Lips: Clippyng and Kyssyng in the Early Sixteenth Century'. in Livia A, Hall K (eds.) Queerly phrased Oxford University Press, USA , pp. 167-177.
- . (1996) 'The Prophet at Home: Elizabeth Barton and the Influence of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena'. in Voaden R (ed.) Prophets abroad Boydell & Brewer , pp. 161-176.
- . (1993) '‘”No Writing for Writing’s Sake”: The Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women''. in Cherewatuk K, Wiethaus U (eds.) Dear Sister Univ of Pennsylvania Pr , pp. 122-138.
Internet publications
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(2012) 'Margery Kempe'.. In Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature. Ed. Andrew Hadfield. New York: Oxford University Press Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/728537/
Abstract
This online annotated bibliography introduces the reader to key criticism and studies of The Book of Margery Kempe and its contexts. It offers an overview of the field, followed by a review of scholarly texts, editions, text books and translations, and anthologies. Covering religious and historical contexts, it looks at mysticism, hagiography, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, English and European contexts, and geographies of belief. It considers issues of authority, authorship and voice, and of gender and sexuality, including feminist approaches, queer readings, and studies of the body. The final sections look at Kempe's reputation and the afterlife of the Book and at fictionalizations of Kempe's life.
Departmental Duties
Head of School
