Kate Koppelman, PhD

Both my teaching and my research explore moments of textual, cultural, and historical anxiety--moments of “unknowing” or uncertainty regarding individual, national, or religious identities. I am particularly interested in the culture of the Middle Ages both for what it can teach us about our own efforts to negotiate between and among various external (and sometimes internal) expectations as well as the ways in which the medieval world (real and imagined) has and continues to be used in our current historical moment. I use psychoanalytic theory because I feel that it provides us with a unique vocabulary to talk about such negotiations--additionally, I feel as though it constantly pushes the edges of what we see as comfortable, knowable, or real. I also have an unrelenting interest in detective fiction, and a particular affection for British mysteries. More recently I have been interested in notions of the post- or trans-human as they appear both in texts from the more distant past as well as more contemporary fictional imaginings.

Interests: Medieval literature and culture, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, posthumanism, detective fiction.

Current and Recent Courses: Chaucer, Reading the Posthuman (UCOR), Medieval Marvels, Medieval Masculinities, Literary Studies, Medieval Posthumanism (planned SQ 2022).