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Marlene Hennessy

Marlene Villalobos Hennessy received her B.A. from Bard College and her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 2001. In 2003-2004 she was an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. Her areas of interest include Middle English Literature, Medieval Manuscripts and the History of the Book, and Medieval Religious Culture. She teaches courses on Chaucer, Early British Literature, and Medieval Women, among others. She was recently awarded the Donald Bullough Fellowship for a Mediaeval Historian and will be in residence at the St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Scotland, for the spring 2012 term.

She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Speaking Crucifixes: Devotional Images and Spiritual Reading in Late Medieval England. This study explores how devotional images and image-making intersect with religious practice in medieval English literature and manuscript art.

She has edited a collection of essays, Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott. English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2009), and is also completing research on a reference work entitled An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c.1380 - c.1509: The Scottish Libraries and Collections.

Selected Publications:

“The Disappearing Book in ‘The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters’” in ‘Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life’: Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300-1560, ed. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). (in press).

“The Social Life of A Manuscript Metaphor: Christ’s Blood as Ink” in The Social Life of Illumination, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Kruse, and Kathryn Smith (forthcoming, Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).

“The Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse,” in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Julian M. Luxford (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 179-197. Written with Michael G. Sargent.

“Three Marian Texts Including a Prayer for a Lay-Brother in London, British Library MS Additional 37049,” English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700, vol. 14, Regional Manuscripts 1200-1700, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2008): 163-79.

“Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late Medieval English Manuscript,” in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. Rachel Fulton and Bruce W. Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 182-191.

“Passion Devotion, Penitential Reading, and the Manuscript Page: The ‘Hours of the Cross’ in London, British Library, MS Additional 37049,” Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004): 213-52.

“The Remains of the Royal Dead in an English Carthusian Manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 33 ( 2002): 310-54.