Clare Lees

BA Leeds, MA Leeds, PhD Liverpool
Professor

Research Interests:

Old and Middle English Language and Literature I am a medievalist who works principally but not exclusively on Old English literary culture and whose frame of reference is contemporary Medieval Studies. That is, my work is situated at the intersection of two disciplines: firstly, that of Anglo-Saxon Studies, which takes as its subject English language, literature and culture from about the late fifth century to about the mid-1100s; and, secondly, that of Medieval Studies, which has a particular emphasis on interdisciplinarity and cross-period work. I have three main research interests: gender and sexuality studies, religious writing and cultural studies (especially issues of place and landscape, and relations between textual and material culture). I have a strong profile as a collaborative scholar who is interested in contemporary theoretical discourse.

I am currently writing a book on perception as interpretation in Anglo-Saxon culture, which explores the relation between Old English literary texts and Anglo-Saxon and modern discourses of the senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and yes even smelling) in order to make sense of this old literature. I am also working on a postcolonial reading of Anglo-Saxon religious texts for a collection of essays on the tenth-century writer, Ælfric. A more preliminary and longer-lasting project on Anglo-Saxon poetry (part of a return to aesthetics and ethics in critical discourse) will initially take the form of a couple of articles on the New Old English poets of the second half of the twentieth century (such as Basil Bunting and Edwin Morgan).

I welcome proposals from research students interested in working on any aspect of Anglo-Saxon or Medieval literary culture, especially those who wish to explore issues of gender, sexuality, disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, postcolonial studies, place, belief and the relation between Old and the New Old English poetries of the twentieth century.

Select Publications:

A Place to Believe in: Locating Medieval Landscapes, co-edited with Gillian R. Overing (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2006)

Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments , Fred Orton and Ian Wood, with Clare A. Lees (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
Gender and Empire in the Early Medieval World, co-edited with Gillian R. Overing, special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Winter 2004)
Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), with Gillian R Overing
Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance co-edited with Thelma S. Fenster (London: Palgrave, 2002)
Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages ed. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994)

Articles/Chapters in Books

‘Anglo-Saxon Horizons: Places of the Mind in the Northumbrian Landscape,’ with Gillian R. Overing in A Place to Believe in: Locating Medieval Landscapes, 2006, pp. 1-26
‘Actually Existing Anglo-Saxon Studies,’ New Medieval Literatures 7 (2005), 223-52
‘Signifying Gender and Empire,’ with Gillian R. Overing in Gender and Empire in the Early Medieval World, 2004, pp. 1-16
‘The Clerics and The Critics: Misogyny and the Social Symbolic in Anglo-Saxon England,’with Gillian Overing, in Gender in Debate, 2002, ed. Lees and Fenster, pp. 19-39
‘Before History, Before Difference: Bodies, Metaphor and the Church in Anglo-Saxon England,’ with Gillian R. Overing, Yale Journal of Criticism
‘At A Crossroads: Feminism and Old English,’ in Approaches to Reading Old English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 146-69
‘Engendering Religious Desire: Sex, Knowledge, and Christian Identity in Anglo-Saxon England,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies27.1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 1-29
‘Men and Beowulf,’ in Medieval Masculinities, ed. Lees, pp. 129-48
‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? Contexts for Editing Old English Prose,’ Editing Old English, ed. D. G. Scragg and Paul E. Szarmach (Cambridge:Brewer, 1994), pp. 97-114
‘Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Hild, Bede, and the Relations of Cultural Production’, with Gillian R. Overing, Exemplaria 6 (1994): 35-65. Repr. in Old English: Critical Essays, ed. Roy Liuzza, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 125-56
‘Gender and Exchange in Piers Plowman’, Class and Gender in Early English Literature, ed. Britton Harwood and Gillian R. Overing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 112-130
‘Working with Patristic Sources: Language and Context in Old English Homilies,’ Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (Albany: SUNY, 1991), pp.157-80 11 (1998): 315-34

Teaching:

I teach on the following courses: Medieval Literary Culture, Cultural Encounters: Old English Language and Literature; Beowulf: Heroes and Other Monsters; Old English I: Poetic Voices, Old English II: Literature and Belief. I also contribute lectures and seminars to the Middle English courses in the department

At the MA level, I offer the following courses: Books and Bodies; Critical Encounters in Anglo-Saxon Studies. I also contribute to the core courses in the Medieval Pathway and the MA in Medieval Studies

Contact Clare Lees