Professor Emerita, Interdisciplinary Humanities
Denise Despres is an interdisciplinary scholar of medieval literature and devotional culture. She has explored medieval literary and visual hermeneutics in a manuscript culture, medieval women writers and subjectivity, and anti-Judaism in 12th- through 14th-century England. Her essays have been published in Oxford Chaucer Handbook, Blackwell Companion to British Literature, Speculum, Modern Philology, The Journal of Religion, and English Language Notes, among other publications. She takes a special interest in medieval mystical and religious literature, dream visions, and chivalric romances. Her interest in visual heuristics led to the coauthoring of the book Iconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics of Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman—a reception study of the single illustrated manuscript of Piers Plowman. She holds a Ph.D. in British literature and taught English, and in the honors and humanities programs.