Office Address

359 New Cabell Hall

Fall 2024 Office Hours

Mondays 11:00 - 12:00pm

Wednesdays 3:30 - 4:30pm 

Biography

Deborah McGrady is a specialist of late-medieval French literature and culture. Her forthcoming book, Joan of Arc: A Cultural History of a French Icon, is due out in Spring 2025. Previous work dealt with reading, authorship and patronage in late medieval culture, including her first monograph, Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Audience (Toronto University Press, 2006, rpt. 2012), and, more recently, The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure? The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France (Toronto University Press, 2018). She is also the co-editor of  Christine de Pizan: A Casebook (2003, rpt. 2016) and A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut (2012). A strong promoter of new scholarship, she serves as Executive Editor of Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures (Johns Hopkins UP). She is currently a College Fellow in the Engagement's Program, where she teaches a course on the ethics of studying the past.

Education

• Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Master of Arts (MA), University of California, Santa Barbara
• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of California, Santa Barbara

Honors and Professional Activities

Executive Editor, Digital Philology:  A Journal of Medieval Cultures, John Hpkins Universtiy Press (2019-)

2013-2015 French Embassy Grant for “Making Medieval Poetry,” Co-Principal Investigator with Helen Solterer, Duke University

2011-2013 Andrew Mellon Foundation Grant for “Machaut in the Book: Representations of Authorship in Late Medieval Manuscripts.”

2010-2011 Gould Foundation Fellowship, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, North Carolina

2002 – 2003 Mellon Fellowship, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana

1997 – 1999 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

Representative Courses

Undergraduate:

• In the French Department

Heroes and Villains from the Medieval World

Joan of Arc, from Medieval to Modern

• Beyond the French Department

EGMT 1540: Ethics: What Do We Owe Joan of Arc?

MSP 3501: Exploring the Middle Ages: Medieval Identities and Cultures

WGS 3814: Gender/Sexuality/Identity in the Premodern World

Graduate:

• Premodern Francophone Worlds and Global Networks
• Race/Gender/Class in Premodern France
• Art & War in Late Medieval France

Sample Publications

• The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure? The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France. Toronto University Press (December 2018).
• “Textual Bodies, the Digital Space, and Intimacy: Machaut’s Corpus as Process in the Judgment Cycle,” Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures. 5.1 (2016). 
• “Textual Bodies and Manuscript Matters: The Case of Turin State Archives, MS J.b.IX.10,”​ Mediaevalia (2019). 
•  “Joan of Arc and the Literary Imagination,” Cambridge Companion to French Literature, ed. John D. Lyons. (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
• “Que tous se rallïent: Alain Chartier and Pierre de Nesson on Poetic Peace and the Dangers of Debate,” A Companion to Alain Chartier (c. 1385-1430): Father of French Eloquence, eds. Daisy Delogu, Joan McRae, Emma Cayley. (Brill, 2015). 183-99.
• "Rethinking the Boundaries of Patronage,"  Special Issue  Digital Philology,  (Fall 2013) Volume 2 Number 2, 145-154.
• “Guerre ne sert que de torment: Remembering War in the Poetic Correspondence of Charles d’Orléans,” Commemorating Violence: The Writing of History in the Francophone Middle Ages, Noah Guynn and Zrinka Stahuljak, eds. (Boydell and Brewer, 2012).
• “Reading for Authority: Portraits of Christine de Pizan and Her Readers,” Medieval Authorship: Theory and Practice, eds. Steve Partridge and Erik Kwakkel (Toronto University Press, 2012).
• “Machaut and His Material Legacy,” A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut (Brill Academic Publishing, 2012), 361-86.
• “De ‘l’onneur et louenge des femmes’: Les dédicaces épistolaires du Débat sur le Roman de la Rose et la réconfiguration du champ littéraire” in « Publics et publications dans les éloges collectifs de femmes à la fin du Moyen Age et sous l’Ancien Régime, » Renée-Claude Breitenstein, Special Issue, Etudes françaises 47.3 (2011), 11-28.