CONTACT INFORMATION:
Associate Professor of French, Medieval Studies and Gender and Women's Studies
Department of French
University of Illinois
2090 Foreign Languages Bldg
707 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801 USA
 

Office Telephone:	(217) 244-2716
Office Fax:	(217) 244-2223
Active email:	kfresco@uiuc.edu
Relevant Webpage:	http://www.french.uiuc.edu/people/faculty/kfresco.htm

SCHOLARLY INTERESTS:
Current area(s) of research:
My research embraces medieval French lyric and romance, with editions published by Droz, Garland and D.S. Brewer. I am currently completing a critical edition of Christine de Pizan’s Enseignement moraux, the book of practical and moral guidance written for her son. I am also interested in the manuscript context of medieval works and am pursuing a book-length project on the place of works by Christine de Pizan in manuscript collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Selected publications, recent and forthcoming:

“Chançon legiere a chanter”: Essays on Old French Literature in Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg, eds. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publicatons, Inc., 2007).

“The Lyric Elements in Li Biaus Descouneüs by Renaut de Bâgé,” in “Chançon Legiere a Chanter”: Essays on Old French Literature in Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg, eds. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, Inc., 2007).

“Gendered Household Spaces in Christine de Pizan's Livre des trois vertus” in European Households in the Middle Ages, eds. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees-Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 187-97.

“Les Enseignements moraux de Christine de Pizan dans l’ordre des textes de BnF f. fr. 1181, un recueil varié du 15e siècle,” Revue Babel 16 (forthcoming 2e semestre 2007)

“Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraulx in the Order of Texts of Paris, BnF fr. 1551,” in Christine de Pizan, femme de sciences, femme de lettres, dir. J. Dor et M.-E. Hénault, avec la collaboration de B. Ribémont, Études christiniennes (Paris: Champion) forthcoming 2008.

Les Enseignements moraux de Christine de Pizan, édition critique, Études christiniennes (Paris: Honoré Champion) (forthcoming 2009)
 

WUN-IDENTIFIED RESEARCH COLLABORATION THEMES:
Multilingualism in the Middle Ages:
This topic relates directly to a paper that I will be presenting at the 2008 International Congress on Medieval Studies: “Multilingual Late Medieval Manuscript Anthologies Containing Works by Christine de Pizan.” This paper will contribute to my project on late medieval manuscript anthologies containing her works.

History of the Medieval Book:
My project on late medieval manuscript anthologies containing works by Christine de Pizan relates directly to this topic. I have given a series of papers on the role of her works in the order of texts in some of these manuscripts. This work contributed to an advanced undergraduate course that I have taught on Christine. Conversations with WUN colleagues generated an interdisciplinary joint project on Brit. Lib. Royal 15 E.vi (the Shrewsbury Book). We have just presented preliminary work in the context of a conference, “Collections in Context,” held in Urbana Sept. 13-15, 2008. Contributions to this conference are being coordinated into a volume to be published. The group of us working on the Shrewsbury Book will develop our collaboration with a view to an on-line resource for teaching and research. We are currently preparing applications for funding opportunities.
 

Medieval Chronicle Studies:

Do you have any other ideas for themes that might be of broad academic interest to other medievalists?:
There is interest in our group of medievalists on this campus on the formation of female subjectivity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. 
Such a project could address the emergence of female points of view in the domains of literary discourse and the visual arts. 
Questions such as the following could be considered: 
What are the socio-cultural contexts in which this emergence takes place? 
What strategies do women use to insert themselves into male artistic traditions? 
To what extent do women writers and artists imitate other women? 
Are multiple and ambivalent female views presented? 
 

Ph.D.s UNDER SUPERVISION:
Karen Lurkhur (Comp. Lit.) “Redefining Gender Through the Arena of the Male Body: The Reception of Thomas’s Tristran in the Old French Le Chevalier de la Charette and the Old Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Isodd” (with Marianne Kalinke)

Carola Dwyer (Comp. Lit.) “Concepts of the Grotesque in Late Medieval Romance” (with Claudia Bornholdt)
Gretchen Seamons (French) No working title yet but dissertation will be on Christine de Pizan’s Advision Christine

INTEREST IN CONDUCTING A VIDEO-CONFERENCING SEMINAR OR COURSE:

Yes: perhaps our interdisciplinary seminar could be opened to participation by faculty and students at WUN institutions.
 

MEDIEVAL COURSES TAUGHT:
Introduction to Old French, Construction of Gender in Medieval French Texts, Reading Medieval Misogyny
 

COURSES THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE DEVELOPED: