Dr Niamh Kehoe

Current Teaching (SoSe 2024) and Supervision

Teaching:

• Introduction to Old English Language
• Introduction to Middle English Language

Supervision:

• Elena Lamp, MA thesis: Women and Water in Medieval Literature. (Second Supervisor).

Past Teaching and Supervision

Universität Bonn

Teaching:

• The History of the English Language (Module Leader: WiSe 2023-24)
• The History of the English Langauge (Module Leader: SoSe 2023)
• Introduction to Old English Language (Module Leader: SoSe 2023)

Supervision:

Johannes Gaspardo, MA thesis: The Sword and the Crown – Scotland’s Medieval Heroes William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in Modern Film. (Second Supervisor).

Anglistik 1, Medieval English Literature and Historical Linguistics, Heinrich Heine Universität 

Teaching:

• Basic Module: “Introduction to Medieval English Studies” (Module Coordinator, 2021-2023).
• Intermediate Option: "Humour, Horror, and the Other in Early Medieval Literature" (Module Coordinator, 2022).
• Intermediate Option: “Middle English Mystics: Visionaries and Radicals” (Module Leader, 2021).
• Advanced Option: “Performance and Poetry in Medieval Drama” (Module Leader, 2021).

Supervision:                

• MA thesis in Medieval Studies. Title: “On the Wagon and in the Street: Stagecraft, Performance, and the Creation of Meaning in Select Plays from the Chester Mystery Cycle.” Successfully submitted on 30.09.2021.
• BA dissertation in Medieval Studies. Title: “Understanding the Latin of Mankind: A Case for Ambiguity.” Successfully submitted on 08.06.22.
• BA dissertation in Medieval Studies. Title: "Orpheus' Journey Through Media: Spaces, Places, and Time in Medieval and Modern Mediums.' Successfully submitted on 21.02.23.

School of English, Trinity College Dublin

• First Year Core Module: “The Origins of Old English” (Tutor, 2021).

School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics, Newcastle University (2019-2020)

• 2nd Year Option: “Monsters, Misery, and Miracles: Heroic Life in Old English Poetry” (Module Leader).
• 3rd Year Option: “Chaucer, Chivalry, and Heresy in the Middle Ages, c.1350-1500” (Module Leader).
• 1st Year Module: “Introduction to Literary Studies II” (Co-Lecturer).
• 2nd Year Module: “Transformations” (Co-Lecturer).
• Postgraduate Module “Research Methods” (Guest Lecturer, 23.09.2019).

School of English, University College Cork, Ireland (2014-2018)

• 1st Year Core Module: “Literature and Society: Medieval to Renaissance” (Tutor).
• 2nd Year Core Module: “Old English Language” (Tutor).
• 2nd Year Option: “Beyond Beowulf: Old English Heroic Poetry” (Co-lecturer, 2016).

I work on medieval literature, focusing on the most popular texts from the period, vernacular and Latin hagiographic narratives. I’m interested in the changing presentations of holiness in lives produced in pre- and early post-Conquest England, and particularly enjoy examining how vernacular texts were adapted from their Latin sources. I’m especially interested in how narrative changes in saints’ lives inform our understanding of how holiness was understood, how it was useful to audiences, and what these texts can yield regarding changing discourses of morality, emotion, and exemplarity. 

I am also interested in Middle English romance and its intersections with hagiography.

Monographs and Current Research

My PhD thesis identified humour in Old and Middle English hagiographical narratives produced from c. 900–c.1300, alongside Latin sources, tracing the changes and continuities in humour’s form and function with the genre. In doing so, it offered a new model for decoding how holiness was conceived as well as how hagiographic texts were adapted to new contexts. I am currently writing my first monograph based on my PhD research, incorporating a chronological broadening to c.1500 and an inclusion of verse lives.

Habilitation:

My habilitation explores the intersection of functionality and identity in the surviving corpus of manuscripts containing the collection of texts known today as the South English Legendary. The South English Legendary is a rich and varied anthology, its potential for adaptation is evinced by its wide circulation in the south-west of England from ca. 1260-1500. My investigation entails a balance of close reading of select manuscripts as case studies, informed by an overview of the compilation of the extant manuscripts (around sixty). Despite the evident popularity of the South English Legendary tradition, it remains critically understudied – particularly in terms of its intra-manuscript textual relationships, and how its manuscript witnesses may have served communities. This project proposes the first large-scale examination of evidence for the intersection of functionality and identity within the tradition: rather than attempting to reconstruct the identity of the writer(s), original audience(s), or the original aim of these texts, this project instead seeks to examine manuscript dispersal and content; I aim to uncover what manuscript compilations can reveal regarding the identities and needs of the communities that used them.

Journal Articles:

“Unsaintly Behaviour? The Old English Eustace and Models of Holiness in Early Medieval England.” The Review of English Studies. 73:312, 2022, pp. 809-824.

“The Importance of Being Foolish: Reconstruction of the Pagan and Saint in Ælfric’s Life of St Cecilia”, SELIM Journal Vol. 23, 2018. 1-26.

Under Review:

'Humour, Horror, and Violence in Ælfric's Passion of St Vincent.' submitted to JEGP in February 2024.

(Short) Book Chapters:

“Cecilia.” Women in Early Medieval England: A Florilegium. (Eds.) Emily Butler, Hilary E. Fox, and Irina Dumitrescu. (Forthcoming with Palgrave).

“Euphrosyne.” Women in Early Medieval England: A Florilegium. (Eds.) Emily Butler, Hilary E. Fox, and Irina Dumitrescu. (Forthcoming with Palgrave).

“Theophistis.” Women in Early Medieval England: A Florilegium. (Eds.) Emily Butler, Hilary E. Fox, and Irina Dumitrescu. (Forthcoming with Palgrave).

Edited Collections:

Niamh Kehoe. Ed. English Studies: Special Issue on Morality, Exemplarity, and Emotion in Old English Literature. Forthcoming with English Studies 2024. 

Translations:

Beowulf: lines 106-120, for Beowulf By All: A Community Translation and Workbook. (Eds.) Elaine Treharne and Jeannie Abbot. ARC Humanities Press. 2021.

Book Reviews:

A Christian Mannes Bileeve. Edited from Washington, Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections, MS 4. Ed. Nicole Smith. Middle English Texts 60. Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2021. Forthcoming with Oenach.

The Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers. Edited from the Text Published by William Caxton (1491). Eds. Alexandra Barratt and Susan Power. Middle English Texts 61. Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2021. Forthcoming with Oenach.

Holy Harlots in Medieval English Religious Literature: Authority, Exemplarity, and Femininity. Juliette Vuille. Cambridge, Brewer, 2021. Anglia 141:1, 2023, pp. 135-140.

The Canon and Chronology of Ælfric of Eynsham. Aaron J Kleist. Boydell and Brewer, 2019. English Studies. Vol. 101, Issue 5, 2020, pp.640-641.

Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. A Tribute to Helen Cooper. Studies in Medieval Romance. Edited by Archibald, Elizabeth, Megan G. Leitch and Corinne Saunders. D. S. Brewer. 2018. Anglia. 138:1, 2020, pp.182-186.

The Transmission of Romance: Metres, Manuscripts, and Early Prints. Edited by Ad Putter and Judith A. Jefferson. D. S. Brewer, 2018. English Studies, 100:8, 2019, pp.1010-1012.

Other Publications:

'The Poems of the Exeter Book.' The Year's Work in English Studies, 101 (2022).

TOEBI Newsletter 39, co-edited with Rachel Burns (2022).

'The Poems of the Exeter Book.' The Year's Work in English Studies, 100 (2021).

TOEBI Newsletter 38, co-edited with Rachel Burns (2021).

'The Poems of the Exeter Book.' The Year's Work in English Studies, 99 (2020).

TOEBI Newsletter 37, co-edited with Rachel Burns (2020).

“Holy Humour: Vernacular Saints’ Lives in England, 900–1300”, The Boolean Journal, 2015, 87-91.

Education:

2018          PhD. Graduated on 21 February 2019. University College Cork.

2011          MA in Medieval English Literature and Language. University College Cork.

2010          BA in English and History. University College Cork.
 

Employment:

Apr. 2023 – present: University of Bonn.

May 2021– Mar. 2023: Lecturer in Medieval English, Heinrich Heine Universität.

Feb. 2021– Apr. 2021: Adjunct Teaching Fellow in Old English, Trinity College Dublin.

Dec. 2020 – Apr. 2021: Research Assistant on the UKRI-funded project ‘The Human Remains’, Dept. of Archaeology, Classics, and Egyptology, University of Liverpool.

Jan. 2019 – Jan. 2020: Lecturer in Medieval Literature, Newcastle University.

Sep. 2014 – Nov. 2018: Teacher of Old, Middle, and Early Modern Literature in the School of English, University College Cork.

Sep. 2014 – Nov. 2018: Teacher of Old English Language in the School of English, University College Cork.

Oct. 2015 – Nov.2017: Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar at University College Cork. 

Invited Lectures and Seminars:

21.03.2024: “Communicating Violence: Humour and Horror in an Old English Saint’s Life.” Invited by Dr John Curran for the Classical and Medieval Culture Seminar at Queen’s University Belfast.

08.03.2023: "Humour and Horror in Ælfric's Passion of St Vincent.' Invited by Dr Francis Leneghan for the Medieval English Research Seminar at the University of Oxford.

19.01.2023: "Slipping In and Out of Sight: Interpreting Violence in Ælfric's Life of St Vincent.' Invited by Dr RAFAŁ BORYSŁAWSKI for the Centre of Nordic and Old English Studies, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Silesia. 

05.07.2022:  “Unearthly Appetites: Horror and Humour in Ælfric of Eynsham’s Passion of St. Vincent.” Invited by Prof. Dr Miriam Edlich-Muth for the Anglistik 1 Research Colloquium, Heinrich-Heine University.

10.03.2021 : “Medieval Hagiography and Humour.” Invited by Dr Ruth Nugent as part of knowledge exchange for ‘The Human Remains’ project, University of Liverpool.

29.06.2020:  “Fool Steam Ahead: The Role of Humour in the Passion of St Eustace.” Invited by Dr Francis Leneghan for the Oxford Old English Work in Progress Seminar, Oxford University.

11.12.2019: “The Transmission of Humour in the Old and Middle English versions of the Passion of St. Eustace” invited by Dr Ruth Connolly for Newcastle University’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies research seminar.

18.04.2017:  “Ælfric of Eynsham and Vernacular Learning”, invited by Dr Shane Lordan for, ‘The Anglo-Saxon World: AD 450-1100’, University College Dublin.

15.11.2016: “Gendered Violence in Late Anglo-Saxon Hagiography”, invited by Dr Amanullah De Sondy for, ‘Religions, Gender, and Sexuality’, University College Cork.

Select Conference Papers: 

16.09.2022: 'Mind the Gap: Language, Class, and Hagiographic Tropes in the South English Legendary' Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature. University of La Rioja, Lagrono.

27.07.2021: “Wala wa! Humour and the presentation of holiness in the Old English Passion of Saint Eustace.” Repurposing Saints in Medieval English Hagiography, Heinrich Heine Universität.

08.09.2020: “Gendered Humour in Early English Martyr Saints’ Lives: An Exploration”. The Sacred and Profanity. An Online Symposium. University of Bristol.

20.09.2019: “Romancing the Saint: Saint Eustace’s Transformation from Comic Figure to Romance Hero in the Early South English Legendary.” Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature. University of Valladolid.

02.04.2019: “The Social and Political Afterlives of Anglo-Saxon Hagiographies.” International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds.

08.05.2019: “Fools and Sinners: Pedagogy in Two Anonymous Old English Saints’ Lives.” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University.

26.07.2017: “Great Expectations? Applying Humour Theory to Medieval Saints’ Lives.” Humour, History, and Methodology: A Multidisciplinary and Trans-Professional Enquiry. Durham University.

17.03.2017: “Crowd Control: the South English Legendary and the revival of vernacular writings” The XI Cardiff Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, The Medieval Translator: Medieval Translations and their Readership, Institute for Medieval Research, Vienna.

16.09.2016: “The Importance of Being Foolish: the reconstruction of the pagan and saint in medieval England.” Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature. University of Vigo.

30.07.2016: “Great Expectations: Literary Devices at Play in Late Anglo-Saxon Hagiographic Texts.” Irish Conference of Medievalists, Maynooth University.

26.04.2016: “Gendered Violence in Late Anglo-Saxon Hagiography: Rethinking the Sexualisation of Female Martyrs” Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages, University of St. Andrews.

18.02.2016: “Poster Presentation” for Holy Hero(in)es: Literary Constructions of Heroism in Late Antique and Early Medieval Hagiography, University of Ghent.

20.05.2015L “Inherited Humour?: The Influence of Late Antique Hagiography on their Old English counterparts.” Colloquium on Late Antique Hagiography as Literature, University of Edinburgh.

11.04.2015: “Heroes and Heroines: Old English Saints’ Lives as Edifying Tales” Stories and Storytelling in the Medieval World: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University College London.

05.12.2014: “Saintly Humour: Humour and Edification in Medieval Hagiography” The Graduate School, College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences, UCC.

21.11.2014: “Gendered Violence and Humour in Medieval English Saints’ Lives, 900 – 1300” Gender and Metamorphosis: Síbeal Irish Postgraduate Feminine and Gender Studies Network Annual Conference, Trinity College Dublin.