Dr. Nicole Rice
Professor
B.A., Yale University,
M.Phil., University of Cambridge,
Ph.D. Columbia University,
Research Focus: Medieval Religious Culture
Nicole R. Rice joined the St. John’s University English Department in September 2008 after teaching for several years at Yale University. Her undergraduate and graduate courses on medieval literature cover topics such as the Middle English cycle drama, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and sex and gender in fabliau and romance. Dr. Rice’s scholarship explores connections among late medieval religious culture, social life, and expressive modes such as prose, poetry, and drama. Her first book, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2008), analyzes the Middle English prose guides that developed to adapt professional religious rules and routines for lay readers. An edited collection of essays on Middle English spiritual texts, entitled Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations, will appear in 2013. Collaborative projects with Dr. Margaret A. Pappano of Queen’s University include a co-edited special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Fall 2013) on the topic of artisan culture, and a book provisionally entitled The Civic Cycles: Drama and Artisan Culture in Premodern York and Chester. Rice and Pappano received a 2011-12 ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship for this book project. Dr. Rice’s essays have appeared in journals including Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Comparative Drama, and Journal of the History of Sexuality.