Mx Francois.e Charmaille, Faculty of English

frvc2@cam.ac.uk

 

Biographical Information

I am a Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius. After growing up in South London, I moved to Cambridge for a BA in English at Robinson College. I then moved to Christ's for an MPhil in the MMLL faculty, followed by a PhD in English.

Research Interests

I write about the history of gender and sexuality in medieval Western Europe. My research focuses on the ways disciplines of knowledge, such as grammar, medicine, and meteorology shaped ideas about gender. As part of this work, I bring medieval sources into contact with modern and contemporary critical theory.

I have published on topics such as the philosophy of gay history, intersex concepts in 12th-century medicine, and trans conceptualisations of the climate in medieval culture. At present, I am at work on a conceptual history of gender in the later Middle Ages (12th-14th centuries), that aims to redefine gender by tracing its grammatical genealogy.

Other texts, authors, and topics of interest include: Hildegard of Bingen, mythographies, Ovidian reception, medieval climate science, Marie de France, the Gawain-poet, Marguerite Porete, John Gower, Gwerful Mechain, Bernardus Silvestris, and Christine de Pizan. In addition to trans and queer theory, my work is informed by a sustained engagement with French thinkers of the postwar era, including Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Aimé Césaire, Catherine Malabou, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Lacan, Édouard Glissant, and Roland Barthes.

Selected Publications

'Trans Climates of the European Middle Ages, 500-1300', Speculum, 98.3 (2023), 695-726.

'Intersex Between Sex and Gender in Cause et cure', Exemplaria, 33.4 (2021), 327-343.

'Queer Strategies of Gay History: Boswell's "Weapons", Foucault's Expérience', Diacritics, 48.4 (2020), 102-121.