Mel Chen’s 2012 Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect builds from the linguist Michael Silverstein’s pioneering study of what he termed “animacy hierarchies.” The…
During our first presentation, we already heard about Susan Crane’s illustration of three principles for making meaning in Bestiaries and in medieval writing about animals…
Cleanness belongs to a manuscript now known as Cotton Nero A.x/2: Cotton because it belonged to the seventeenth-century library of Robert Cotton; Nero because he…
Silence with Parents One of the chapters of Giovanni Baptista Gelli’s Circe features a conversation between Ulysses and a deer. Gelli’s sixteenth-century work, a series…
“I am afraid that we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” – Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols[1] What is…
I’m giving a talk at Brown on September 11th 2025, which happens to be today. Here’s a link to the announcement. And here’s the talk:…
I don’t want to presume that everyone here came in understanding that the first several chapters of Genesis comprise two separate creation stories. The first…
Wade has been solved, or at least has been a bit unmuddled. Who or what is “Wade”? If you don’t know, you’re in good company.…
Paper for the “Premodern Animal Emotions” conference at the Academy of Athens My paper today isn’t about animals as such. It’s about the relationship of…
Hi everyone. Jeff Stroyanoff’s paper reads the Miller’s Tale as queer horror, specifically, Alison as a queer monster, at least in relation to Absolon’s heterosexuality,…
