Hannah Zdansky
Research Focus: Medieval English, French, and Celtic literatures
Background: Hannah received her B.A. from Baylor University through the University Scholars Program, a special interdisciplinary program within the Honors College that fosters a rich background in the liberal arts while allowing its students to focus on one or several major fields. Her primary concentration was in English with additional concentrations in French, Latin, and—through another Honors College program—Great Texts of the Western Tradition. Upon graduation, she continued her studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway as a Fulbright Scholar, taking an M.A. in Old and Middle Irish with 1st Class Honors. As a Javits Fellow, she has been engaged in doctoral work through the Ph.D. in Literature Program at the University of Notre Dame. Hannah graduated with a Ph.D. in Literature in May 2017. Her research interests include Old/Middle English, Old/Middle French and Anglo-Norman, and Old/Middle Irish and Welsh languages and literatures; religion and literature; medieval reading practices and reception theory; manuscript studies and the history of the book; medieval education and didactic literature; nationalism and trans-nationalism in the Middle Ages; and women’s literature.
Her dissertation is titled Converting Romance: The Spiritual Significance of a Secular Genre in Medieval France, England, Wales, and Ireland, directed by Dr. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and read by Dr. Maureen Boulton and Dr. Amy Mulligan. Her study responds to the work of Derek Pearsall, John Thompson, Julia Boffey, Phillipa Hardman, Susanna Fein, Murray Evans, and others regarding “miscellanies” and the influence of manuscript contexts on reception. These scholars have shown how productive it is to consider compilation rationales and to read texts against one another. Their studies have raised important questions, one of which is whether romances could offer pious reading. However, few have dealt with how romance might function as a religious genre. What Hannah accomplishes is a foray into the history of pious reading of romance, focusing on the transmission of seminal texts in their manuscript contexts and the treatment of significant theological ideas. In her first chapter, she explores the Middle English Ywain and Gawain, a translation of Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier au Lion. As she shows, based on an analysis of the accompanying texts, many of them catechetical and devotional, Ywain and Gawain likely functioned as a complex, extended exemplum in its only extant manuscript, modeling the steps of penance as well as the ascent of the soul by marked gradations of love. In chapter two, she then looks at several of the Old French manuscript contexts to establish a history of the narrative’s reception, and she likewise considers a neighboring tradition in the distinctive Middle Welsh Owain. Chapters three and four treat Guy of Warwick. In chapter three, Hannah examines the transmission of the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic and reevaluates the place of the Middle English Guy in the Auchinleck Manuscript in light of this and the company of another work—the homiletic Speculum Gy de Warewyke. Almost no one studies the Speculum, but what she shows in chapter four is that these two must be considered together. The fifteenth-century Irish Beathadh Sir Gyi o Bharbhuic, in all likelihood a translation of a lost Middle English version, combines the two. In order to understand the reception of these texts, the use of miscellanies, and to better grasp medieval reading practices, Hannah shows that we have to do two things: pay attention to material context and be open to questioning the secularity of medieval romances. Coming to understand how these texts functioned for their audiences can help us to more seriously consider the role of romances in later anthologies/miscellanies like the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91) and the Heege Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.3.1), a topic she addresses in her conclusion and is developing further in her first book project.
Undergraduate Institution: B.A., Baylor University, magna cum laude
Master of Arts Institution: M.A., National University of Ireland, Galway, 1st Class Honors
Doctor of Philosophy Institution: Ph.D., University of Notre Dame (May 2017)
Teaching:
PLS 23102-03, Great Books Seminar II (Fall 2015) (http://pls.nd.edu/requirements-and-courses/great-books-seminars/#seminarII) – Instructor of Record
WR 13100-07, Writing and Rhetoric: Understanding Media, Arguing Persuasively, and Communicating Ethically (Fall 2015) – Instructor of Record
PLS 23102-01, Great Books Seminar II (Spring 2015) (http://pls.nd.edu/requirements-and-courses/great-books-seminars/#seminarII) – Co-Instructor of Record
WR 13100-16, Thinking, Writing, and Research: The Art of Argumentation and the Production of Meaningful, Ethical Discourse (Spring 2015) – Instructor of Record
ENGL 20230/ LIT 20920/ MI 20183, Voyage, Quest, & Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages (Spring 2014) (http://blogs.nd.edu/pilgrimage/) – Instructor of Record
ENGL 40219, Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Fall 2012) – Teaching Assistant
ENGL 30110, British Literary Traditions I: Beginnings to 1660 (Fall 2011) – Teaching Assistant
Awards:
• Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, University of Notre Dame Graduate School and Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, April 2016
Grants and Fellowships:
• Graduate Professional Development Grant, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, digital humanities training at the Cologne Center for eHumanities at the University of Cologne, May 2016
• MLA Travel Grant, Modern Language Association, to present at the 131st MLA Annual Convention in Austin, Texas, January 2016
• Gordon Conference Presentation Grant, University of Notre Dame Graduate Student Union, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Summer 2013, and Fall 2015
• Schallek Award, Medieval Academy of America and the Richard III Society – American Branch, dissertation work, Summer 2013
• Graduate Travel and Research Grant, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, dissertation research, Summer 2013
• Mellon Summer Stipend, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Grant for “Religion across the Disciplines,” Summer 2013
• Notebaert Professional Development Award, University of Notre Dame Graduate School, Welsh language study at Cardiff University, Summer 2012
• Graduate Initiative Grant, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, manuscript research at the British Library, October 2011
• Graduate Student Professional Development Award, Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, to present at the 13th Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society at the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Montréal, July 2010
• Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, continued doctoral study, Fall 2009-Summer 2013
• Institut d’études françaises d’Avignon, Bryn Mawr College, half-tuition scholarship, Summer 2009
• Summer Language Abroad Grant, Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, language immersion in France, Summer 2009
• Rio Grande Valley Federation of Women’s Clubs Scholarship, to attend the University of Notre Dame, Fall 2008
• Fulbright U.S. Student Scholarship, Institute of International Education, for study in Ireland, Fall 2006-Summer 2007
Projects:
• Mellon-ISLA Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Workshop, awarded funding by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts to organize a year-long series of workshops on the topic of “New Media: From the Middle Ages to the Digital Age,” August 2012-May 2013 (http://blogs.nd.edu/newmedia/)
• Graduate Student Conference Grant, awarded a portion of the maximum amount by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies to organize a guest lecture and graduate seminar by Dr. Siân Echard on the topic of manuscript/media studies and the digital humanities, “Parchment, print, pictures and pixels: Change and continuity in the reproduction of medieval manuscripts,” March 29-30, 2012
Publications:
Refereed Articles –
• “Religion in/and/all over Medieval Literature” (co-authored with Katy Wright-Bushman), Religion & Literature 46.2-3 (2014): 53-74.
• “‘And fer ouer þe French flod’: A Look at Cotton Nero A.x from an International Perspective.” New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall. Ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and John J. Thompson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. 226-250.
• “Love in Translation: The Irish Vernacularization of the Aeneid.” The Language of Gender, Power, and Agency in Celtic Studies. Ed. Amber Handy and Brian Ó Conchubhair. Dublin: Arlen House, 2014. 43-58.
• “Fin’ Amors Refined: The Spiritual Sublimation of the Courtly Couple in the Queste del Saint Graal.” Cultures courtoises en mouvement. Ed. Isabelle Arseneau and Francis Gingras. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2011. 210-223.
Reference Articles –
• “Patrick, Saint” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. vol. 3. Ed. George T. Kurian. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 1770-1771.
• “Priscian” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. vol. 3. Ed. Robert E. Bjork. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 1359.
• “St. Adomnán” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. vol. 1. Ed. Robert E. Bjork. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 11.
• “Courtly Love” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry before 1600. Ed. Michelle M. Sauer. New York: Facts on File, 2008. 130-131.
• “Lust” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. vol. 2. The Medieval Era. Ed. William E. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 136-137.
• “Medb” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. vol. 2. The Medieval Era. Ed. William E. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 152.
• “Monasticism, Male.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. vol. 2. The Medieval Era. Ed. William E. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 165-166.
• “Pope Joan.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. vol. 2. The Medieval Era. Ed. William E. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 191.
• “Tristan” (co-authored with K. Sarah-Jane Murray), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. vol. 2. The Medieval Era. Ed. William E. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 234-236.
Book Reviews –
• Newman, Barbara. Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. In Religion & Literature 47.2 (2016): 178-181.
• Fletcher, Alan J. The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author, and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012. In Comitatus 44 (2013): 267-270.
Contact Information:
Ph.D. in Literature Program
323 O’Shaughnessy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-5639
Phone: (574) 631-0481/ Fax: (574) 631-8399
Email: hzdansky@alumni.nd.edu