Dr Alicia Spencer-Hall

Profile

I specialise in comparative analyses of medieval literature and modern critical theory. I work extensively on medieval hagiography (saints’ lives), with my research inflected by contemporary visual, media, cultural, and gender studies. With a similar cross-temporal approach, I research experiences and theories of chronic pain in the Middle Ages in terms of modern crip theory. In all my work, I aim to show what we can learn about our present moment by looking to the medieval past, and what, in turn, we can learn about the medieval era by engaging rigorously, and joyously, with the specificities of the twenty-first century.

My first book, "Medieval Saints and Modern Screens" (Amsterdam University Press) explores the intersections between divine visions in the lives of medieval holy women and our modern consumption of media. My second book, "Medieval Twitter" (ARC Humanities), analyses similarities between medieval methods of communication and Twitter. The essay collection, "Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography" (Amsterdam University Press), co-edited with Blake Gutt, demonstrates the presence of trans and genderqueer identities in the Middle Ages, thereby re-instating marginalised folx into the historical record. 

Research

Research Interests:

Medieval literature and culture, medieval hagiography, cultural studies, digital studies, film and media studies, gender studies, trans studies, visual cultures, disability studies, crip theory, medical humanities, intersectional critical theory.

Publications

Monographs: 

Medieval Twitter (Leeds, UK: ARC Humanities, forthcoming 2021).  

Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2018). Made Open Access in 2020, fully funded by Knowledge Unlatched as part of the 2019 Select Collection. Selection based on votes of an international panel of librarians. Reviewed in: Medievally Speaking, The Medieval Review, H-France, The English Historical Review, MEDIENWissenschaften, Film & History, and Screen. 

Edited collections: 

Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages, Volume 1: Theories, Texts, and Lives, co-edited with Stephanie Grace-Petinos and Leah Pope Parker, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2022).   

Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages, Volume 2: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches to Healing Miracles, co-edited with Stephanie Grace-Petinos and Leah Pope Parker, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2022). 

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, co-edited with Blake Gutt, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2020/2021).  

Journal articles: 

‘The Horror of Orthodoxy: Christina Mirabilis, Thirteenth-Century “Zombie” Saint’, postmedieval, 8.3 (2017), 352-75 https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2016.19>. 

‘Marie of Oignies, of Nivelles, or of Villers: The Multiple Textual Identities of a 13th-Century Holy Woman’, Open Library of Humanities, 3.1: 11 (2017), 1-34 <https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.88/>.  

‘Textual Authority and Symbolic Capital: Birgitta of Sweden’s Inclusion in Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon’, Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 4 (2013), 107-19 <http://www.eaglehill.us/JONAonline/articles/JONA/JONA-Sp-4/20-Spencer-Hall.shtml>. 

‘Post-Mortem Projections: Medieval Mystical Resurrection and the Return of Tupac Shakur’, MDCCCXXVI Opticon1826, 13 (2012), 56-71 <http://ojs.lib.ucl.ac.uk/index.php/up/article/view/1327/651>. 

Articles in edited collections: 

‘Introduction’, co-written with Stephanie Grace-Petinos and Leah Pope Parker, in Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages, Volume 1: Theories, Texts, and Lives, ed. by Stephanie Grace-Petinos, Leah Pope Parker and Alicia Spencer-Hall (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2022).  

‘Introduction’, co-written with Stephanie Grace-Petinos and Leah Pope Parker, in Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages, Volume 2: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches to Healing Miracles, ed. by Stephanie Grace-Petinos, Leah Pope Parker and Alicia Spencer-Hall, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2022).  

‘Epilogue’, in Hagiography and Monastic Identity, ed. by Massimo Rondolino, Dean Accardi, Emilia Jamroziak, and Marco Papasidero (Leeds, UK: ARC Humanities, forthcoming 2021/2022).   

‘Introduction’, co-written with Blake Gutt, in Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, ed. by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2020/2021).  

‘Appendix: Trans and Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide’, co-written with Blake Gutt, in Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, ed. by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2020/2021).  

‘The Passion of Megan Fox: Sacrifice and Spectacle in Jennifer’s Body’, in Cinema Liberation Theology, ed. by Anthony Ballas (London, UK: Routledge, forthcoming 2021).  

‘Chronic Pain and Illness: Reinstating Crip-Chronic Histories to Forge Affirmative Disability Futures’, in A Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jonathan Hsy, Joshua Eyler, and Tory Pearman (London, UK: Bloomsbury Press, 2020), pp. 51-66. 

‘Embracing the Medievalist Margin’, in The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist, ed. by Kisha Tracy and John P. Sexton (Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2018), pp. 161-68.  

‘Christ’s Suppurating Wounds: Leprosy in the Vita of Alice of Schaerbeek (d. 1250)’, in ‘His brest tobrosten’: Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, ed. by Kelly DeVries and Larissa Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 389-416. 

Book reviews: 

‘[Review of] Les Raisons du livre: du statut de l’œuvre écrite à la figuration du symbole (XIIe-XVIIe siècles). Études réunies par GÉRARD GROS. (Colloques, congrès et conférences sur le Moyen Âge, 18.) Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015. 234 pp’, French Studies, 70.3 (2016), 436-37 <http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/3/436>. 

‘Review of Bill Burgwinkle and Cary Howie, Sanctity and Pornography in Medieval Culture: On the Verge. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010)’, Marginalia, 16 (2013), 23-26 

<http://www.marginalia.co.uk/journal/13cambridge/13cambridge_reviews.pdf>. 

‘Review of Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century: The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame,Anchoress of Magdeburg, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011)’, Marginalia, 17 (2013), 54-57 <http://www.marginalia.co.uk/journal/17cambridge/17cambridge_reviews.pdf>.