Robert Mills

BA, MA (Manchester), PhD (Cambridge)
Senior Lecturer

Research Interests

Robert Mills, Suspended Animation (2005)

Medieval Studies: To date my work as a medievalist has mainly been concerned with representations of the punished body in late medieval art and literature and, within that broad theme, constructions of pain, pleasure, gender and sexual identity. My monograph Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (2005) presents the fruits of this research. I have also published a number of book chapters, peer-reviewed articles and reviews in this field, particularly on the topic of martyrdom. I am especially interested in theoretical approaches to medieval culture, notably queer theory and psychoanalysis. One article, for instance, revisits Freudian theories of masochism to help unravel lines of identification and desire in late medieval martyrdom and passion devotion. As a general rule, my research is driven by thematic and critical concerns, rather than by period, medium or genre. Although the central core of my research focuses on the literature and visual culture of England and France between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth, I have also published on art in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy. One of the essay collections I recently co-edited, The Monstrous Middle Ages (2003), exemplifies my commitment to research with a strong interdisciplinary focus. I am a member of the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies (CLAMS) at King's.

I would be interested to hear from prospective research students interested in areas related to medieval literature and visual culture (especially in the context of their intersection); medieval religious writings; pain, pleasure and punishment in the Middle Ages; hagiography; monsters and margins; theory and medieval studies.

Mills and Campbell, Troubled Vision (2004)

History of Gender and Sexuality: I have longstanding interests in gender and sexuality, both as historical phenomena and critical categories. I have published a number of book chapters and peer-reviewed articles that take these issues as their starting point. I have also co-edited an interdisciplinary essay collection on gender, sexuality and sight in medieval text and image (based on the Gender and Medieval Studies conference I organised at King’s in 2002). Publications include a study of the tonsure as a gendered cultural symbol in medieval religion; an analysis of women’s voice and agency in medieval virgin martyr legends and contemporary Hindu widow sacrifice; and an article on suffering and sexuality in the oeuvre of the fifteenth-century Parisian poet François Villon. I have also contributed the medieval section to A Gay History of Britain (2007) on male-male love and sex c.1000–1500. Queer studies and LGBT cultural history have always exerted a shaping influence on my research. I was the co-organizer of the Queer Matters conference at King’s in May 2004, an event that attracted 200 speakers from all around the world. I am currently director of the Queer@King’s research centre, and I have organized a number of symposia, conferences, research seminars and public events under this heading.

Currently I am working on a book exploring the role of sodomy and friendship in medieval Christian formations of selfhood. Building on my work on Villon, as well as research I have undertaken on representations of purgatorial torment in medieval art and literature, I also hope in the future to embark on a large-scale study of gender, purgatory, imprisonment and mercy in late medieval culture.

I would be interested in supervising work that relates to any aspects of medieval gender and sexuality, as well as work exploring aspects of queer history and culture from a theoretical perspective.

Recent publications

Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (2005)
Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, co-edited with Emma Campbell (2004)
The Monstrous Middle Ages, co-edited with Bettina Bildhauer (2003)
'Male-Male Love and Sex in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500', in A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages, ed. Matt Cook, with H.G. Cocks, Robert Mills and Randolph Trumbach (2007), pp. 1-43
‘Queer is Here? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Histories and Public Culture’, History Workshop Journal 62 (2006): 253–63
‘Violence, Community and the Materialisation of Belief,’ in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, ed. Sarah Salih (2006), pp. 87–103
‘Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Poetry by François Villon.’ Exemplaria 17.2 (2005): 445–80
‘The Signification of the Tonsure,’ in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Patricia Cullum & Katherine J. Lewis (2004), pp. 109–126
‘Seeing Face to Face: Troubled Looks in the Katherine Group,’ in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, ed. Emma Campbell & Robert Mills (2004), pp. 117–36
‘Jesus as Monster,’ in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. Bettina Bildhauer & Robert Mills (2003), pp. 28–54
‘Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?,’ in Medieval Virginities, ed. Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans & Sarah Salih (2003), pp. 187–213
‘God’s Time? Purgatory and Temporality in Late Medieval Art,’ in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz & Gerson Moreno-Riano (2003), pp. 477–98
‘A Man Is Being Beaten,’ New Medieval Literatures 5 (2002): 115–53
‘For They Know Not What They Do: Violence in Medieval Passion Iconography,’ Fifteenth-Century Studies 27, special issue: Violence in Fifteenth-Century Text and Image, ed. Edelgard E. DuBruck & Yael Even (2002): 200–216
‘Ecce Homo,’ in Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Samantha J. E. Riches & Sarah Salih (2002), pp. 152–73
‘“Whatever you do is a delight to me!”: Masculinity, Masochism and Queer Play in Representations of Male Martyrdom,’ Exemplaria 13.1 (2001): 1–37

Teaching

I teach/have taught the following undergraduate modules: Introducing Literary Theories; Medieval Literary Culture; Subjects of Desire in Medieval Religious Writings; Chaucer; Critically Queer: Literature, Culture and Queer Theory; Seeing Medieval: Vision and Middle English Literature.

I teach the following MA course: Gender and Middle English Literature. I also contribute to the core courses in the Medieval Pathway of the MA in English, the MA in Medieval Studies and the MA in Text and Performance Studies.

In Fall 2006, I was the Charles Owen, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Professor in Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut, where I taught a graduate seminar on 'The Body of the Medieval Friend'.

Contact Robert Mills