Peggy McCracken

Peggy McCracken's teaching and research interests are, broadly defined, in the intersections of medieval literature, history, and theory. Her most recent book, "In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France," explores relations of dominion and mastery as represented through human-animal interactions. In earlier projects Dr. McCracken has studied the intersections of medieval theories and practices of queenship with romances about adulterous queens, and the ways in which gendered cultural values are mapped onto representations of blood. McCracken has also collaborated with colleagues to write books on Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France. Dr. McCracken's other books focus on Barlaam and Josaphat, a widely circulating medieval saint's life based on the life of the Buddha, and she is currently at work on "Ecologies of the Human," a study of medieval understandings of the precarity and persistence of the human, using medieval French translations and adaptations of Ovid’s "Metamorphoses."