Francis, Kersti
Doctoral Candidate, Degree Expected Spring 2022
Dissertation:
Queer Magic: Sodomy, Sin, and the Supernatural in the Later Middle Ages
Contact
Office: Kaplan 149
E-mail / Website / Twitter
Profile:
Kersti Francis is a PhD candidate in English at UCLA where she works on the intersections between magic, gender, and sexuality in the Middle Ages and early English Renaissance (1100-1600). Her dissertation project, Queer Magic: Sodomy, Sin and The Supernatural in the Later Middle Ages, investigates the intersections of magic and gender in medieval literature. Using the guiding framework of medieval understandings of nature and sins contra naturam, she argues that literary magic functions as a “safe” form of heresy for authors to engage in queer imaginings of bodies, genders, and sexual acts.”
Kersti has also worked extensively on medieval histories of science, focusing particularly on the role of alchemy in the literary and philosophical culture of thirteenth-sixteenth century England, on depictions of Mary Magdalene in medieval and Victorian understandings of prostitution, and on the figure of the meykongr (maiden-king) in the Old Norse saga tradition. Her research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ahmanson Foundation, The National Science Foundation, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and others.
Education
- C. Phil University of California, Los Angeles, 2018
- MA University of California, Los Angeles, 2017
- BA Bryn Mawr College, 2013
Publications
“’An Evill Race:’ Utopia, Spenser, and the Dangers of Cultural Hybridity.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol 53 (forthcoming fall 2022).
“Assassins Creed: Nottingham, or The Medievalism of Ubisoft’s Ludic Outlaw,” The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies, Vol. 4 No.2 (forthcoming fall 2022).
“Alchemy, the Liber Aureus, and the Erotics of Knowledge,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 57, No. 2 (2022): 141-164.
Winner of the 2020 Best Graduate Essay Prize, Society for Feminist Medieval Scholarship.
“Fetishizing the Past: Troilus and Criseyde, Sadomasochism, and the Historophilia of Modern BDSM.” Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in the Middle Ages. Dr. Christopher Vaccaro, Editor; Manchester: Manchester University Press. July 2022.
L. Morreale, K. Francis, et al. “Transcribing Le Pèlerinage de Damoiselle Sapience: Scholarly Editing Covid 19-Style,” The Digital Medievalist 15 (2022).
“Shoptalk: Overheard at Kalamazoo.” Public Books ed. Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom. Web, published 5/25/18. <http://www.publicbooks.org/shoptalk-overheard-at-kzoo-2018/>
“Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages by Zachary A. Matus, and A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz by David I. Shyovitz (book review).” In Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018, Vol.49, pp.244-248.
“Mirrors of Virtue: Manuscript and Print in Late Pre-Modern Iceland” ed. by Margrét Eggertsdóttir, Matthew James Driscoll (book review). In Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018, Vol.49, pp.251-253.
Research Interests
History of Magic
Middle English Romance
Old French Romance
History of the Book
12thC Natural Philosophy
History of Alchemy
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Queer Studies
Medieval and Early Modern England
Renaissance Literature
Old Norse Literature
Interest Areas
• Medieval Studies
• Sexuality & Gender Studies
• Renaissance & Early Modern Studies
• Critical Theory
