Dr. Marisa Galvez

Biography

Marisa Galvez specializes in literature from the Middle Ages in France and Western Europe, particularly poetry and narrative literature written in Occitan and Old French. Her research interests encompass troubadours, vernacular poetics, and the intersections of performance and literary cultures, alongside a critical history of medieval studies as a discipline. At Stanford, she teaches courses on medieval and Renaissance French literature as well as interdisciplinary upper-level courses on the medieval imaginary as represented in modern literature, film, and art. Her book, "Songbook: Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe" (University of Chicago Press, 2012), awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize by the Medieval Academy of America, discusses the emergence of poetry as a modern category through an analysis of vernacular songbooks from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Another significant work, "Subject Crusade: Lyric, Romance, and Materials, 1150-1500" (University of Chicago Press, 2020), examines how vernacular literature addressed the complexities of ideas surrounding love, chivalry, and the crusades, placing these narratives in dialogue with new perspectives on penance and confession emerging between the 12th and 13th centuries.

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