Biography
My work at Cambridge explores the effects of animal imagery on the sexual control of both enclosed and travelling women. I consider a range of sources, from the Kilpeck Corbels to Henryson's Twa Mice, via a manuscript of Gerald of Wales' Topography of Ireland where a woman smooches a goat in the margins. Ultimately, I am interested in the interplay between text and image, and how far feminised animals and monstrous women were used to educate, entertain, or admonish female readers and viewers.
From 2009-14 BC (Before Cambridge) I undertook the MA and MPhil in English Language at the University of Glasgow. Should you wish to, you can learn all about my pre-Sassinak-traitor activities and publications at my Academia.edu profile, above. The picture is of me looking rather pleased with the interactive version of the Aberdeen Bestiary.
Further Research Interests
Medieval (animal) art, manuscript illuminations and marginalia, monsters and monster theory, the history of prostitution,medieval and modern misogyny, travelling females/pilgrims, sirens, medieval glass and sculpture, Early Modern witches, Richard de Fournival and the Bestiaire d'amour/ Response du Bestiaire, the depiction of Jews in medieval art and literature, the pre-lapsarian humans [Adam/Eve/Lilith], and feminist theory.
I also have second life as a feminist blogger, and occasionally have anxiety dreams about doing the MFA. Generally this manifests itself as an unhealthy addiction to Granta and n+1, and a file on my computer containing drafts of papers on Salinger, Nabokov, Angela Carter, Franzen and Roth (though not all at once).
