Anthropologist Tim Ingold has influentially advocated for a means of thinking that mirrors that of a craftsman or artist. For Ingold, this means adopting a mode of thinking that responds to, and moves with, the materials we work with. As a medievalist who makes linocut prints, I am curious about how my academic and crafting experiences interact, and how my printmaking might function, in Ingold’s words, as an “art of inquiry.” This article will consider two crafting processes required to make a linocut—carving the block to create a relief, and the creation of an impression—and will explore how these crafting processes have encouraged me to think about our creation of the medieval now. To do so, I will reflect on my experience making a lino print, entitled “Salt-in-the-Wound,” to accompany Laura Varnam’s poem “The Name of the Father,” which gives a voice to Grendel’s Mother (one of the three major antagonists in the Old English poem Beowulf).

This is a reflection on some of the ways in which book reviewing might inform and enrich the study of medieval literature. Looking to my own experiences as a medievalist who also writes and edits general-audience review essays, I begin by considering the particular mode of reading it encourages, and then explore what that mode might offer us as scholars. I argue against the idea that non-academic reviewing promotes a superficial or derivative engagement with the books in question, and suggest instead that it demands an evaluative and instinct-led—but deeply serious—kind of reading. Showing how reviewing has prompted me to rethink a number of canonical medieval texts, I make a case for its value not just as a means of outreach or professional development, but as a scholarly activity.

This autobiographically inflected essay argues for the value of integrating creative work, comics in this case, into scholarly practice in order to encourage a different way of reading, communicate with diverse audiences, and to model an approach that encourages further creative-critical experimentation within medieval studies. Citing the repetition and compression built into the process of cartooning as both challenges and generative strengths of the comics medium, the essay describes three research-informed cartooning projects alongside images taken from the discussed works, all of which take the form of literary adaptations. Discussion of these individual projects leads to a broader examination of what creative-critical work and artistic response might make possible for scholars seeking new ways to engage with the medieval past through less common media and approaches and how this practice might address contemporary conversations about creativity, attention, and community.

As a medieval researcher and a performance storyteller, I use performances to bridge the gap between the groundbreaking work being done on gender in medieval studies and public perceptions of this period. My show Yde and Olive is an adaptation of an Old French thirteenth-century story of cross-dressing, female autonomy, and queer love. It is the latest among my six medieval storytelling shows, which aim to confront the problem that histories and stories showing diverse gender roles remain underrepresented in modern medievalism. Meanwhile, my audience response data demonstrates an eagerness beyond academia to hear stories from the past that contain more expansive representations of gender and sexuality. In Yde and Olive, I wanted to make connections between medieval and modern gender concerns and diversify the repertoire of commonly told medieval stories (often stories told about men and by men), to include tales which centre the agencies of female and queer characters and those who research them. This self-reflective paper provides a case study of the creative and research methods I used to adapt Yde and Olive for modern audiences, as well as considering the responsibilities inherent in any form of public medievalism.

This article considers the relationship between my work as a medievalist and my poetic practice. After discussing three poems in which I draw on my academic research, it investigates how my own writing has shaped my understanding of medieval poetry, using two lyrics of Thomas Wyatt’s as examples.

This article explores the Middle Ages as a creative “topic,” examining how personal encounters with medieval places, objects, texts, and histories can generate creative as well as scholarly engagement. Drawing childhood experiences, public history, and translation together with creative non-fiction, it argues that medieval scholarship is enriched by acknowledging the speculative and creative dimensions of reconstructing a fragmentary past. The article considers creative non-fiction as a mode of historically grounded enquiry that combines research with narrative, description, uncertainty, and perspective. It proposes creativity not as an alternative to scholarship, but as a productive extension of it.

This braided essay brings together contemporary concerns, personal memoir, and medieval studies. Specifically, it responds to a feeling of anger regarding current political situations, by meditating on medieval Irish instances of, and reflections on, that emotion. The whole exemplifies the technique of the braided essay which I used to larger-scale effect in an earlier book, Fierce Appetites, and implicitly makes the case that a different register—and particularly an emotional honesty—is permissible in “public” writing in a way that would not usually be accepted in traditional academic discourse.