Dr. Francois.e Charmaille

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.

Why study medieval literature and culture? In the centennial issue of Speculum, I argue that the Middle Ages are helpful to us because they are inessential. Medieval cultures preceded the hegemonic structures that govern our lives today (such as capitalism, white supremacy, or heteronormativity). They offer us a glimpse of other ways of thinking and being that reveal our own capacity to be otherwise.

I have published on topics such as monks' identification with bees, trans conceptualisations of the climate in medieval culture, and the role animals play in literary descriptions of sodomy. 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 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, 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, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Roland Barthes.