Assistant Professor of French
University of California, Berkeley
Current & Past Projects
Click on any of the images below to find out more about the project in question.
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Publications and Presentations
Book
Anachrony and Assemblage: Reading Manuscript Culture in Medieval Soissons (forthcoming with Cornell University Press).
Edited Collection
(edited with Hannah Morcos, Maria Teresa Rachetta, Natasha Romanova and Simone Ventura) The Values of the Vernacular: Essays in Medieval Romance Languages and Literatures in Dialogue with Simon Gaunt (Rome: Viella, 2025). (link)
Journal Special Issue
(edited with Andrew James Johnston and Wolfram R. Keller) Touching Troy, Anglia 142.3 (2024). (link)
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Le toucher et l'expérience herméneutique : l'exemple du Roman de la Rose”, Littérales, 53 (2026) [forthcoming].
(with Giulia Boitani) “A Hospitaller Book in Fifteenth-Century Florence: Notes on the Owners of Cologny, Bodmer 147”, Medioevo Romanzo, 48 (2024), 335–61. (link)
“Was Drouart la Vache, author of the Livre d’amour (1290), ‘le Roi de Soissons’?” Romania, 142 (2024), 365–82. (extract)
(with Andrew James Johnston and Wolfram R. Keller) “Introduction: Touching Troy,” Anglia 142.3 (2024), 419–27. (link)
“Defacing Troy: From Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece to Medieval Manuscripts,” Anglia, 142.3 (2024), 548–72. (link)
“Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame and the Powers of Olfaction”, New Medieval Literatures, 24 (2024), 60–100. (link) Runner-up: Society for French Studies 2024 Malcolm Bowie Prize.
“Veiled Reading, Reading Veils: Textile Curtains and the Experiences of Medieval French Manuscripts, 1200–1325”, Digital Philology, 12.2 (2023), 155–94. (link)
“The Date, Author, and Context of the Roman de Silence: A Reassessment”, Medium Ævum, 91 (2022), 70–99. (link)
“All Roads Lead to Rome: Revisiting the Pairing of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César and the Faits des Romains in the Thirteenth Century”, Romania, 139 (2021), 5–36. (link)
“The Untimely Subject: Reporting Discourse and Bearing Witness in Villehardouin's La Conquête de Constantinople and Yannick Haenel's Jan Karski”, Interfaces, 7 (2020), 9–36. [open-access, download here]
Book Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
“Reading Touch in Two Manuscripts of the Roman de Troie (with Jean-Luc Nancy): Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 60 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis Latinus 1505”, in ed. Emma Campbell and Luke Sunderland, The Horizons of Medieval French and Occitan: New Approaches to Manuscripts and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2026), 266–89. (link)
“Assemblages and History in a Medieval French Manuscript from Corbie, ca. 1295:Copenhagen, Kongelige Biblioteket, GKS 487 fº”, in ed. Johannes Junge Ruhland, Making History with Manuscripts in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025), 23–46. (link)
Digital Editions
Interpretive edition of the Orient II section of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César in BnF fr. 20125 (link)
Interpretive edition of the Alexander section of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César in BnF fr. 20125 (link)
(with Hannah Morcos, Simon Gaunt, Simone Ventura and Maria Teresa Rachetta) Semi-diplomatic editions of BnF fr. 20125 and British Library, Royal 20 D I (link)
Collaboration on Digital Tools
“Alignment”, The Values of French (link)
“Search”, The Values of French (link)
Conference Proceedings
“L'expérience The Values of French Language and Literature in the European Middle Ages”, in ed. Marta Materni, “Autour du Roman de Florimont. Approches multidisciplinaires à la complexité textuelle médiévale”, Quaderni di Francigena, 2 (2020), 151–163.
Reviews
Kathryn M. Rudy, Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts, vol. 2: Social Encounters with the Book [Medium Ævum, 94.1, 2025, 236–37]
Kathryn M. Rudy, Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts, vol. 1: Officials and Their Books [Medium Ævum, 93.1, 2024, 220]
Francesco Montorsi, Mémoire des anciens: traces littéraires de l'Antiquité aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles [Medium Ævum, 92.2, 2023, 395]
Anne Rochebouet, Réécrire l’histoire de Troie: la cinquième prose du ‘Roman de Troie’, compilation et création [French Studies, 77, 2023]
Maud Burnett McInerney, Translation and Temporality in Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s ‘Roman de Troie’ [French Studies, 76, 2022, 645]
Véronique Dominguez-Guillaume, Élisabeth Gaucher- Rémond (eds), Expériences critiques. Approche historiographique de quelques objets littéraires médiévaux [Le Moyen Âge, 125, 2020, 625–26]
Submitted
“Lectures affectives des Faits des Romains (XIIIe-XVe siècle)”
“The Monstrosity of Medieval French Alexander Books”
“Nancy, Exscription, and the First Troubadour”
“Touching Yvain: Traces of Affective Reading in Paris, BnF, Français 1433”
In Progress
Touch and the Experiences of Medieval French Manuscripts (book on traces of tactile interaction in manuscripts of medieval French and Occitan texts)
Invited Lectures
2025: Department of French Lecture Series, Columbia University, Maison Française. ‘Haptics, Reading, and the Roman de la Rose’.
2025: Medieval Questions Seminar, University of Cambridge. ‘Why did readers touch images in manuscripts of the Romance of the Rose?’
2025: History of Art Department, University of Michigan. ‘Haptic Virtuality: Touching Illuminated Manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose and the Faits des Romains.'
2022: Cambridge Medieval Literature and Culture Seminar, University of Cambridge. ‘Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame and the Powers of Olfaction.’
2022: Cambridge Medieval English Research Seminar, University of Cambridge. ‘Bookish Attachments: Reading the Touch of Medieval French and Occitan Romance’.
2021: St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies Seminar, University of St Andrews. ‘Between Textual and Emotional Communities? Touch and Medieval French Literary Culture’.
2021: University of Oxford Medieval French Seminar, Maison Française d'Oxford. ‘Feeling Medieval French Literature: Touch, Experience, Materiality’.
Conference and Workshop Papers
2026: Roundtable, Princeton University, ‘Medieval Matters: Manuscript Culture and the Five Senses in the Middle Ages.’ ‘Flamenca and the Erotics of Book-Touching.’
2026: Roundtable, UC Berkeley, ‘Translation in Medieval Studies.’ ‘Translating Flamenca: Prospects and Challenges.’
2026: Workshop, UC Berkeley, ‘Violence in the Domestic Sphere: Premodern Images, Texts, Artifacts.’ ‘The Jealous Husband, or How Medieval Manuscripts Mediate Violence.’
2025: Workshop, University of Cambridge, ‘Sociology of Reading in Late Medieval Europe.’ ‘Bourdieu, Habitus, Manuscripts.’
2025: Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, Harvard University. ‘Touch and the Subject of the Roman de la Rose.’
2024: Berkeley Medieval Studies Symposium. ‘Touch and the Subject of the Roman de la Rose.’
2024: 27th Congress of the International Arthurian Society, Université d'Aix-Marseille. ‘Traces de lecture affective dans un manuscrit d'Yvain (BnF français 1433)’ (paper presented in French).
2024: Society for French Studies Annual Conference, University of Stirling. ‘What Their Fingers Knew: Mediating Touch in Three Medieval French Pocket Books.’
2024: Workshop, University of California, Berkeley, ‘Modeling Change’. ‘Scripta, hybridity, shelf-life: three manuscript-based approaches to historical change.’
2024: Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, University of Notre Dame. ‘Crises of Time, Compilation, and Medieval French Alexandre Manuscripts’.
2023: International workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, ‘Imperial Fictions: the Cultural Entanglements and Multiple Temporalities of Alexander’s Afterlives’. ‘Alexander and the Surviving Image: The Politics of Repetition in Paris, BnF, fr. 24364 (Roman de toute chevalerie)’.
2023: International workshop, University of Bern and Monte Verità, Ascona, ‘The Senses: Present Issues, Past Perspectives’. ‘Touch, Animation, and the Virtual: The Interplay of Sensory and Aesthetic Experience in Medieval French Manuscripts.’
2023: International workshop, IEA Paris, ‘Lire et écrire l'Histoire dans l'Occident médiéval (1150–1500)’. ‘Lectures affectives des Faits des Romains (XIIIe-XVe siècles)’ (paper presented in French).
2023: International workshop, University of Oxford, ‘Cultures of Use and Reuse. Towards a Terminological and Methodological Framework of Reframing and Recycling’. ‘Studying Cultures of Touch and Use in the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Medieval French Biography of Julius Caesar (Faits des Romains)’.
2023: Conference, British Library (organised with Durham University), ‘Monsters of Alexander the Great's Legends in World Cultures’. ‘The Experience of Monstrosity in Medieval French Alexander Manuscripts, 1250–1350’.
2022: International workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, ‘Spectral Temporalities/Spectral Communities: Thinking Hauntologically about Premodern Literature and Culture’. ‘Pressures Past: Spectral Touch and the Premodern Book’.
2022: International workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, ‘Touching Troy: Mediation, Materiality, Intermediality’. ‘Touch and the Materiality of the Roman de Troie.’
2022: International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (online). ‘Assemblages of Time and Matter: Making History in French Manuscripts, ca 1300’.
2022: Workshop organised by Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the Uni. of Cambridge, ‘The Medieval Irish Lucan: Text and Context’. ‘The Old French Li Fet des Romains’.
2021: Workshop organised by Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective, Freie Universität Berlin. ‘Touching Communities: Corpus and Communauté in Jean-Luc Nancy’ (with Simon Godart).
2021: Online Medieval French Seminar (hosted by Durham University). ‘Making Sense of the Roman de Troie (with Jean-Luc Nancy)’.
2021: Society for French Studies Annual Conference (online). ‘What makes an image intolerable? The affective frames of medieval manuscripts’.
2021: International Courtly Literature Society, British Branch Conference, University of Cambridge (online). ‘Benoît in the Veneto: The Roman de Troie of Vatican, BAV, Reg. Lat. 1505’.
2020: Dark Archives 20/20, online conference hosted by SSMLL/University of Oxford. ‘Beyond the Veil: Manuscript Curtains and the Reading Experience, Medieval and Modern’. Watch here.
2019: Workshop ‘Anonymity and Temporality’, Freie Universität Berlin. ‘The Untimely Speaker: Anonymity and Narrative Voice in BnF fr. 17177’.
2019: TVOF Seminar, London. ‘Le manuscrit anachronique: Les voix du passé dans le MS BnF fr. 17177’ (paper presented in French).
2019: International Courtly Literature Society, University of Exeter. ‘The “Histoire atelier” at Soissons and its network’.
2019: Society for French Studies, Royal Holloway University of London. ‘Audible Pasts: Sense and Sound in Medieval French Rhymed Chronicles’.
2019: International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo. ‘The future perfect? Deconstruction, re-assembly and innovation in the manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César’.
2019: Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference, Kellogg College. ‘“Tu ne sivis mie la voie dou commencement”: Deviant Politics and Deviant Textuality around the Figure of Pierre de la Broce’.
2018: International Conference, ‘Autour de Florimont. Textualité médiévale et textualité numérique’, Université Grenoble Alpes. ‘The Values of French Language and Literature in the European Middle Ages’ (paper presented in French).
2018: IMS-Paris International Symposium ‘Truth and Fiction’, Paris. ‘Discours rapporté et la “vérité” de l'histoire dans la Chronique du Pseudo-Turpin’ (paper presented in French). Awarded IMS-Paris PhD student prize.
2018: Graduate workshop ‘Foreign Knowledge: Medieval Attitudes towards the Unknown’, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. ‘Foreign languages and the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César’.
2018: The Values of French International Workshop on the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César, London. ‘La narration de l'histoire’ (roundtable in French with Michelle Szkilnik and Nicola Morato).
2018: Society for French Studies Postgraduate Conference, University College London. ‘L'Histoire se répète: Anachronistic speech in the Eneas of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César’.
Conference Organization
2026: ‘Violence in the Domestic Sphere: Premodern Images, Texts, Artifacts’, workshop at UC Berkeley supported by the France-Berkeley Fund.
2022: ‘Spectral Temporalities/Spectral Communities: Thinking Hauntologically about Premodern Literature and Culture’, international workshop at Freie Universität Berlin.
2022: ‘Touching Troy: Mediation, Materiality, Intermediality’, international workshop at Freie Universität Berlin.
2019: London Postgraduate French Conference, ‘Bearing Witness (Témoignages’). [see the conference report in French Studies Bulletin]
2019: The Values of French conference at KCL and British Library, ‘Narrating History across Languages in Medieval Europe’.
2018: The Values of French international workshop on the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César.
2018: The Values of French project seminars (triannual).