Kathy M. Krause, Professor of French, (B.A., Dartmouth College, 1984; M.A., University of Pennsylvania, 19; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1989). Chair, Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures.  Medieval French literature, roles of women in medieval French literature and literary production, manuscript studies, female inheritance in 13th century France and Flanders. Author of “Generic Space-Off and the Construction of the Female Protagonist: The Chanson de Florence de Rome,” Exemplaria 18.1 (Winter, 2006), 93-136.  This article won Honorable Mention, Best Article Prize, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, 2007.  Author of "The Falsely Accused Heroine in the Miracles de Notre Daqme par personnages and in Late Medieval Prose," in Don Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2008), 113-34. Co-editor, with Alison Stones, of Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music and Manuscripts (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2007).

My research explores a series of interconnected issues related to women’s roles and representation in the French Middle Ages. Building on my initial study of the intertextual representations of women in Old French romance, and in particular those of female protagonists, I am currently examining the ways in which female inheritance intersected with literary production in northern France and Flanders. Combining literary analysis, codicology and historical research, this work aims to challenge traditional male-centered socio-historical analyses of medieval French romance by viewing these texts within the lineage-centered politics of the 13th and 14th centuries. I am also continuing to work on the oeuvre of Gautier de Coinci, one of the major vernacular authors of Marian literature of the Middle Ages. Our edited volume on Gautier has just been published by Brepols, and I am presently developing a database of the illuminated manuscripts of his Miracles de Nostre Dame. I teach courses on French medieval and Renaissance literature, on French language and culture, and on medieval courtly history and culture.