Karen Fresco
Office: 2148 FLB
Phone: 244-2716
Email: kfresco@illinois.edu
Karen Fresco is Associate Professor of French, Medieval Studies and Gender and Women's Studies. Her research embraces medieval French lyric and romance, with editions published by Droz, Garland and D.S. Brewer. She is interested in the manuscript context of medieval works and is pursuing a book-length project on the place of works by Christine de Pizan in manuscript anthologies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She is currently completing a critical edition of Christine de Pizan's Enseignements moraux for Champion.
Courses that Professor Fresco has taught include "The Construction of Gender in Medieval French Texts," "Misogynist Texts and Female Readers," and "Chantilly MS 472, A Thirteenth-Century Literary Anthology: Medieval Works in Their Manuscript Context." She has directed dissertations on the Roman de la Rose and La Mort le roi Artu, and is co-directing dissertations on the ambiguous male body in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot and concepts of the grotesque in medieval romance. She has been a member of doctoral committees in Germanic Languages and Literatures, Comparative Literature, and Art History. She co-organized a multi-year exchange program between medievalists at the University of Illinois and in various research teams of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France. She has been designated Director of the Program in Medieval Studies.
Publications include:
Books
Le Bel Inconnu (Li Biaus Descouneüs/The Fair Unknown). Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 77A. (New York and London: Garland, 1992)
Les Poésies de Gillebert de Berneville. Ed. critique. Textes littéraires français, 357. (Geneva: Droz, 1988)
Articles
“Gendered Household Spaces in Christine de Pizan's Livre des trois vertus” in: The Medieval Household in Christian Europe c. 850-c. 1550, eds. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees-Jones. International Medieval Research, 12. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. 187-97.
“Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraulx in the Design of Paris, BNF fr. 25434” in: Proceedings of the 5th International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan: “Une voix féminine lyrique, politique et didactique,” eds. R. Reisinger and A. Kennedy. Universität Salzburg, 17-21 July, 2003. Salzburg: Verlag Mueller Speiser, forthcoming.
“Authority and Legitimacy in a Fifteenth-Century Miscellany Containing the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (Grenoble ms. 1052, U 909-910)” accepted for inclusion in volume of selected papers from the international CNRS-University of Illinois conference, Images of Authority and the Authority of Images, Urbana, Illinois, April 29-May 1, 2001.
“Le Moyen Age de Petit de Julleville” in: L’influence d’un livre: l’histoire de la langue et de la littérature française (1896-1899); Louis Petit de Julleville, architecte de l’héritage linguistique et littéraire français, eds. Yannick Portebois et Pierre Swiggers. Orbis/Supplementa Peeters, forthcoming.
Reviews
Tony Hunt, ed. Sermons on Joshua I and II. London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1998. Solicited for French Studies LV (2001), 222-223.
Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Vols. III and IV (New York and London: Garland, 1995) (solicited for Arthuriana: 8 [Spring 1998], 86-90)
Rouben C. Cholakian, The Troubadour Lyric: A Psychocritical Reading (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990) (solicited for Encomia 1992)
Recent Conference Papers
“Christine de Pizan dans les recueils manuscrits des quinzième et seizième siècles,” Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Poitiers. July 2005.
“Christine’s Enseignemens moraulx in the Order of Texts of Paris, BNF fr. 1551,” Colloque international “Christine de Pizan, une femme de sciences, une femme de letters,” Université de Liège, 11-14 January 2005.
“Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraulx in the Design of Paris, BN fr. 25434,” accepted for 5e Colloque International sur Christine de Pizan, Salzburg, 17-21 juillet 2003.
“Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraulx in Three Manuscript Anthologies of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (BN fr. 2307, BL Add 17446 and a Manuscript Recently Sold at Auction,” accepted for 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 8-11, 2003.
“The Function of Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraulx in the Order of Texts in Paris, BN fr. 1181” 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 2-5, 2002.
“Authority and Legitimacy in Two Fifteenth-Century Miscellanies Containing the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc,”“Images of Authority and the Authority of Images,” CNRS-UIUC International Colloquium, University of Illinois, April 29-May 1, 2002.
“The Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc in Carpentras, Bibl. Inguimbertine 390: Foregrounding the Critical Female Voice,” 18th Annual Meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association, “The Politics and Aesthetics of Gender in the Middle Ages,” University of Illinois, February 22-23, 2002.
“Christine de Pizan dans les recueils manuscrits des 15e et 16e siècles,” Journée d’études, Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale-Paris; Villejuif, 9 juillet 2002.
“Gendered House Spaces in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des trois vertus,” International Medieval Studies Congress, University of Leeds, 9-12 July 2001.
“Christine de Pizan dans les recueils du 15e siècle,” Laboratoire de médiévistique occidental, Paris, Groupe de recherche: Christine de Pizan, 12 juin 2001.
“The Design of Westminster 21, A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Anthology,” 26th St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, St. Louis University, October 8-9, 1999.