Graduate Course Teaching
PhD and Thesis Supervision
Teaching Positions and Qualifications
Teaching Grants, Awards and Nominations
Digital Humanities Workshops
Graduate Course Teaching
Graduate Course Teaching 2022-2023
Reading Medieval Women: Literacy and Writing Women in Medieval France and England
The Epic Course: A Pre-Modern Genre in the Modern Digital Realm (interdisciplinary MA course co-taught with 5 colleagues)
Graduate Course Teaching 2021-2022
La Querelle des Femmes: Gender and Textual Revolution in Medieval England and France
The Epic Course: A Pre-Modern Genre in the Modern Digital Realm (interdisciplinary MA course co-taught with 4 colleagues)
Graduate Course Teaching 2020-2021
La Querelle des Femmes: Gender and Textual Revolution in Medieval England and France
The Epic Course: A Pre-Modern Genre in the Modern Digital Realm (interdisciplinary MA course co-taught with 4 colleagues)
Graduate Course Teaching 2019-2020
Long-Distance Romance: la transmission du roman courtois médiéval [with Comenius Fellowship Editing Project]
Graduate Course Teaching 2018-2019
Long-Distance Romance: la transmission du roman courtois médiéval
Graduate Course Teaching 2017-2018
Editing Medieval English Texts: The Leiden Lydgate Project
Long-Distance Romance: la transmission du roman courtois médiéval
State of the Art II: King Arthur, a medieval legend at the borders of English literature
PhD and Thesis Supervision
Current PhD Supervision
J. Greenland
MA Theses Supervised
Grundeken, K. “Knights in Shining Armor: Representations of Medieval Chivalry in the films Star Wars and Pretty Woman.” 2022.
Whitney, Rhianne. “Undressing Medieval Bodies: Exploring Sin, Shame and Sexuality through Representations of Nudity and Nakedness in the Middle Ages.” 2021.
Port, Nicolas. “The Immortality of King Arthur The Representation of Arthurian Legends in Contemporary Japanese and American Pop Culture.” 2021.
Remmelzwaal, Dionne. “‘Ne ænig hleomæga feassceaftig ferð frefran meahte’: Old English Elegiac Elements in Breton Lays from Medieval England.” 2021.
Kigma, Simone. “’Ther fell a wondyr cas / Of a ley that was ysette’: Social Critique Enacted by Fairies in the Breton Lays of Lanval, Graelent, Guingamor and Sir Launfal.” 2021.
Bossenbroek, Berber. “Of Gloves, Girdles, and Gilded Combs: Love Tokens and the Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Medieval French and English Romances.” [Research MA] 2021.
de Ruijter, Juul.”But Was He Really Gay? An Analysis of Modern Responses to Medieval Sexuality and Desire.” 2021.
van Nierop, Cindy. “Botanical Representations in Middle English Romance.” 2021.
van Keulen, M. “‘Whereof Bretouns maked her layes’: Audience Expectations and the Middle English Breton Lays.” 2020.
Kluver, Aylin. “Poetic Expressions of Depression: Depictions of Depression in the Poetry of Thomas Hoccleve and Christopher Smart.” 2020.
van Os, G. L. “Queen Arthur, Queer Arthur: Reading the Queer Tradition in Modern Adaptations of Arthuriana.” [Research MA] 2020. [Paper presented at Leeds International Medieval Congress 2019 in session 651, “A Modern Approach for Medieval Times: Queer and Gender Studies as a Tool to Explore Middle English Literature”]
Bierman, Manon. “’For i this wildernesse beoth uvele beastes monie’: A Comparison Between Medieval Bestiaries and the Beasts of Sin Section of Ancrene Wisse.” 2020. [Paper accepted at the Canadian Society of Medievalists Congress 2020 but cancelled due to COVID-19]
Hirsh, Cindy. “‘The False Knight’? The Tension Between Historical And Literary Representations Of Chivalry In France and England, C. 1100-1500.” 2020.
Donk, Annefleur. “‘Je n’en connus aucun digne de mon estime, à part celui-ci’: The Depiction of Sir Lancelot in Chrétien de Troyes’ The Knight of the Cart and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.” 2020.
Reekers, Calum. “ ‘WHEN GOD IT SO DESIRES’: A Critical Edition, Translation and Analysis of the Wills of Richard Beauchamp and Sir Humphrey Starkey” Double thesis in translation and literary studies, co-supervised with Tony Foster [Leiden Translation]. 2019.
Jansen, Jennifer. “Monsters in the Sir Gawain Cycle: Reflections of Tensions Surrounding Aristocratic Identity in the Fifteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Borderlands.” [Research MA] 2019.
Tousain, Simone. “Christine de Pizan’s Fortification in The Book of the City of Ladies.” 2019.
Zwart, Dorien. “Gay Knights and Gay Rights: Homosexuality in the Late Middle Ages and its Presence in Arthurian Literature.” 2019. [Paper presented at Leeds International Medieval Congress 2019 in session 651, “A Modern Approach for Medieval Times: Queer and Gender Studies as a Tool to Explore Middle English Literature”]
De Witte, Daan. “Built on a True Dream: The Medieval Church and its Representation in Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth.” 2018. [Featured on medievalists.net]
Officier, Skye. “Fear or Fascination? Representations of the Wild Man in Middle English Literature.” 2017.
Miesen, Alexander. “No Wycliffe and The Seven Deadly Sins: An Edition of a Treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins in Princeton University, Garrett MS 143 fols. 21v – 26v.” 2017.
BA Theses Supervised
“Same-Sex Love and Desire in Middle English Literature: Lanval and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Context.” 2020.
“Corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe”: How Speech and Silence Reflect Fourteenth-Century Identity Conflicts in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2020.
“It Is Chivalry Which Makes A True Knight”: The Representation of Chivalric Ideals in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. 2020.
“Orfeo Looking Back: Homeric Themes in the Middle English Sir Orfeo.” 2020.
“The Medieval Evolution of a Supernatural Woman: An Exploration of Morgan’s Origins and her Depiction in Three Key Arthurian Works.” 2020.
“Can Women Be Monsters? An Onomastic and Feminist Approach to Grendel’s Mother’s Namelessness.” 2019.
“Warrior Women in the Beowulf Manuscript: A Comparison of Judith and Grendel’s Mother.” 2019.
“The Sexuality of the Three States: Women’s Sexuality in Thirteenth-Century English Texts.” 2018.
“Building Narrative: Architectural Representation in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.” 2018.
“Transnational Transference of Textual Knowledge in Early Sixteenth Century Vernacular Print Culture.” 2018.
“Audience or Author? The Development of Chaucer Editing from the Sixteenth Until the Nineteenth Century.” 2018.
“Changing Perspectives: the Evolution of Arthurian Characters.” 2018.
“‘Life is not a song, sweetling’: Feminism and Subversion of Medievalist Fantasy.” 2018.
“Stylistics, Gender, and Genre in ‘The Miller’s Tale’.” 2018.
“Dating the Old English Exodus: Comparing Deviations from the Biblical Account to Ideas on Church Practices, Volition and Grace, and Women’s Place in Society from the Eighth and Tenth Centuries.” 2017.
“Depictions of God in the Old English Exodus and Judith.” 2017.
“Women in Medieval Fantasy Literature: Gender and Knighthood in George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings.” 2017.
“Spiritual Spouse or Homely Mother: Affective Piety in The Book of Margery Kempe and Revelations of Divine Love.” 2017.
In general, I’m willing to supervise theses on Old and Middle English language and literature and medieval French literature. I can also supervise BA theses on French and English Canadian literature.
Within these areas, my supervision strengths include digital humanities approaches (including online projects, algorithmic criticism, TEI-based editions, and other digital approaches); women’s literature; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; medieval romance; multilingualism in medieval England; book history and manuscript studies; medieval reading communities; literary theory approaches to medieval literature; and the theory and practice of scholarly editing (including digital editions).
If you have an idea for a thesis or dissertation project that falls within or beyond the scope of these topics, feel free to contact me to discuss it. Prospective PhD candidates can get more information about doing a PhD at Leiden University here.
Teaching Positions and Qualifications
Leiden University
2018-present
Assistant Professor (Dutch “Universitair docent”; permanent/tenure-equivalent post) of Late Medieval English Literature
- 2022 Senior Teaching Qualification
- 2017 Basic Teaching Qualification
2016-2018
Lecturer of Late Medieval English Literature
University of Ottawa
2013-2016
Part-Time Professor (‘Instructor of Record’/Lecturer equivalent)
2011-2014
Tutorial leader
Teaching Grants and Nominations
2019 NWO Comenius Teaching Fellowship (50,000 EUR)
2019 ECOLe Blended Learning Grant awarded to develop a Middle English resource
2019 Leiden Education Prize Nomination (not awarded)
2018 Leiden Teaching Prize for the Humanities Nomination [shortlist]
2017 [with Thijs Porck] ECOLe Blended Learning Grant awarded to develop an Old English Learning App
2016 [with Thijs Porck and Erik Kwakkel] Humanities Faculty Grant (17000 EUR) awarded for the development of “Leiden University Medieval Texts Online,” a platform designed to host students’ digital medieval projects
Further information about these grants can be found under ‘Publications and Awards‘.
Digital Humanities Workshops Led
2022 “An Introduction to Creating Sustainable and Dynamic Scholarly Editions with TEI Markup”, Summer School for Literary Studies & Digital Humanities 20-23 June, 2022 [online workshop]
2021 “An Introduction to Creating Sustainable and Dynamic Scholarly Editions with TEI Markup”, Summer School for Literary Studies & Digital Humanities 1-4 June, 2021 [online workshop due to Covid-19]
DR. KRISTA A. MURCHISON 