Lombard Gradual, Italy, mid 15th century Medievalists at Cornell

This section provides information on the people in the Program of Medieval Studies at Cornell, including faculty, staff, graduate students, and alumni/ae. Dissertation abstracts from previous years are available under the graduate students heading.


Current Graduate Students

Current Students | Dissertation Abstracts | Appointments of Graduates

Below you will find the names of those students currently pursuing degrees in Cornell's Medieval Studies Program, along with information about their major and minor fields of concentration, interests, degree status, and anything else they have decided to include. The second list contains the names of medievalists pursuing degrees in other departments, such as History, German Studies, Art History, and English.


Caitlin Callaghan | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Old/Middle English, Medieval History, Law
Previous degrees: B.A., Stanford University, 2003; M.St., Oxford University, 2004
Email: cgc33@cornell.edu

Research interests: English literature through the 18th century, theories of history/historiography, Anglo-American law and literature, pacifist history, Milton, Humanism, Old Norse, Middle High German

Dissertation Working Title: "Order Our Days in Thy Peace": Treatments of Conflict and Peace in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

Cynthia Turner Camp | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Middle English
Email: cc356@cornell.edu

Research interests include late medieval vernacular hagiography, particularly the works of John Lydgate, John Capgrave, and Osbern Bokenham; early printed saints' lives; incorruption and related forms of embodied or enshrined sanctity; concepts of nationalism in late medieval and early modern England (and beyond) as imagined through the pre-Conquest period; late medieval and early modern monastic literature (Latin and Middle English), especially in the context of reform movements as well as political and patronage systems.

Dissertation working title: Embodying the Anglo-Saxons: Incorrupt Saints and Late Medieval Constructions of National Communities. The dissertation examines the importance of pre-Conquest saints to ideas of community in late-medieval England, especially as constructed by monastic poetry and historical writings from the fourteenth through the early sixteenth centuries.

Heather Nicole Crider | fourth year
Fields:  Old English, Middle English, English Renaissance Literature, Old Icelandic Literature
Previous degree: B.A., University of California at Berkeley, 2000
Email:  hnu2@cornell.edu

Research interests:  Wulfstan, the Danelaw, Vikings, issues of translation and multilingualism, frontiers, affective piety, Germanic linguistics

Ionuţ Epurescu-Pascovici | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Medieval History, Renaissance History, Anthropology
Previous degree:  M.A., Central European University, 1999
Email:  pie2@cornell.edu

Research interests:  Historical anthropology, microstoria, crusades, (proto-)national identities

Jamie Friedman | third year
Fields: Middle English Literature; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Previous Degrees: B.A., Whitworth College, 1997; M.A., Portland State University, 2000
Email: jaf84@cornell.edu

Research interests: Late fourteenth-century English poetry, Chaucer, romance literature, literary identity constructions, boundary transgressions

Sarah Harlan-Haughey | second year
Fields: Old/Middle English
Previous degree: B.A., The University of Montana, 2005
Email: smh78@cornell.edu

Research Interests: lyric poetry, ballads, romance, continental connections to English literature

Leigh Harrison | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Middle English, Old English, medieval history
Previous Degree:  B.A., College of William and Mary, 2002
Email:  mlh56@cornell.edu

Research interests:  high- to late-medieval literature and religious life; dissent, especially political or institutional critique; poetics, especially satire and elegy; early Middle English, Norse, history of scholarship

Ashleigh Imus | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Medieval Italian, Renaissance Italian, Classical and Medieval Latin
Email:  asi5@cornell.edu

Research interests:  Medieval philosophy and history, gender studies, Middle English literature, pedagogy
Dissertation Topic:  Mind Reading in Dante's Commedia

Curtis Roberts-Holt Jirsa | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Middle English, Old French, and Old English
Previous degree:  A.B., Bowdoin College, 2001
Email:  crj5@cornell.edu

Research interests:  lyric poetry, late 14th century didactic literature and lay piety, sermon cycles, late English/French romance, chansons de geste, troubador/trouvère poetry, Germanic linguistics
Dissertation topic: Lyric poetry and Piers Plowman

Nicole Jeanette Marafioti | Ph.D. candidate
Fields: Medieval History, Old English
Previous degrees: B.A., Yale University, 2000; M.A., University of York (UK), 2002
Email:  njm28@cornell.edu

Research interests: death, burial, and memorialization; early medieval history and historiography; Anglo-Saxon kingship; hagiography and saints' cults; the Old English homiletic tradition

Deborah Elaine Marcum | third year
Fields: Middle English, Old English, History
Previous degrees: B.A., LeTourneau University, 2003; M.St., Oxford University, 2004
Email: dem56@cornell.edu

Research interests: Religious rhetorical devices, Biblical allusions, canon law, theological debates, chivalry and ethical codes

Libby Dorsch Maxey | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Middle English, Old French and Early Modern literature
Previous degree: B.A. Whitman College, 1999
Email:  ecd23@cornell.edu

Research interests:  Medieval Ovidiana, gender issues and chivalry, intersections of the sacred and secular, classical Latin poetry and its influence on literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dissertation Topic: Literary readings of the Ovide Moralisé

Jessica Streit | first year
Fields: Medieval Art
Previous Degree: B.A.F.A., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2005
Email: jrs238@cornell.edu

Jennifer Watkins | Ph.D. candidate
Fields:  Medieval History, Medieval Archaeology, Medieval Islamic History
Previous degree: B.A., Cornell University, 1995
Email:  jdw7@cornell.edu

Research interests: medieval archaeology, markets and market structures, medieval social history and economics

Return to top


Medievalists in other fields:

Christopher Bailey, History | third year
Email: clb66@cornell.edu

Taryn E.L. Chubb, History of Art | second year
Previous degrees: B.A., Hood College, 2003; M.A., Southern Methodist University, 2005.
Master's thesis: “Fear God and Give Glory to Him: A Fifteenth-Century Valencian Panel Painting of St. Vincent Ferrer in the Meadows Museum”
Email:  tc252@cornell.edu

Research interests:   Medieval Iberia, specifically 14th- and 15th-century panel painting, connections between art and text, and interactions between Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Iberia

Robert Fredona, History | Ph.D. candidate
Dissertation topic: Political conspiracy in Florence, 1340-1382
Email: raf34@cornell.edu

Grace-Yvette Gemmell, German Studies | first year
Email: gyw2@cornell.edu

Research interests: Middle High German, Medieval Celtic Studies and Arthurian Romance

Patricia Har, Comparative Literature | third year
Email: prh27@cornell.edu

Robert Henry, Romance Studies | Ph.D. candidate
Previous degree: B.A., Harvard University
Email: rhh23@cornell.edu

Research Interests: Medieval French Literature, Rutebeuf

Jessica Katz, History | third year
Email: jak89@cornell.edu

Research interests: medieval conflict, Angevin/Capetian interactions, the early Crusades, cultural interactions, medieval Islam, medieval historical literature

Emily Diana Kelley, History of Art | third year
Previous degree: B.A., University of Michigan, 2002
Email: ek236@cornell.edu

Research Interests: Architecture and painting in 14th- and 15th-century Iberia

Tom McSweeney, History | second year
Fields: Medieval History, Early Modern European History, Legal History
Previous degrees: B.A., College of William and Mary, 2002; J.D. and LL.M., Cornell Law School, 2005
Email: tjm37@cornell.edu

Paul Milliman, History | Ph.D. candidate
Email: prm7@cornell.edu

Yael Nadav-Manes, History | Ph.D. candidate
Email: yn38@cornell.edu

Dissertation topic: The Cultural Production of Motherhood: Mothers and their Surrogates on the Sixteenth Century Italian Renaissance stage of the Commedia Erudita

Colleen Slater, History | fourth year
Email: ces55@cornell.edu

Daniel Tonozzi, Romance Studies | Ph.D. candidate
Previous degree: B.A., University of Notre Dame
Email: dtt4@cornell.edu

Research interests: Italian Literature
Dissertation topic: Sixteenth-century censored editions of the Decameron

Jeff Turco, German Studies | Ph.D. candidate
Email: jt98@cornell.edu

Research interests: Medieval German

Misty Urban, English | third year
Email: mru4@cornell.edu

Melissa Winders, English | third year
Previous degree: B.A., Bard College
Email: sm272@cornell.edu

Research interests: Old and Middle English literature, the 15th century, Middle English dream visions, Middle English and Scots romance, and notions of courtesy.

Kim Zarins, English | Ph.D. candidate
Previous Degree:  B.A., UCLA, 1996
Email: kz23@cornell.edu

Research interests: Middle English, the Classical Tradition, Old English, Old Norse