Marisa Galvez

Bio

Marisa Galvez specializes in the literature of the Middle Ages in France and Western Europe, especially the poetry and narrative literature written in Occitan and Old French. Her areas of interest include the troubadours, vernacular poetics, the intersection of performance and literary cultures, and the critical history of medieval studies as a discipline. At Stanford, she currently teaches courses on medieval and Renaissance French literature and love lyric, as well as interdisciplinary upper level courses on the medieval imaginary in modern literature, film, and art.

Her first book, Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2012, awarded John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America), treats what poetry was before the emergence of the modern category, “poetry”: that is, how vernacular songbooks of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries shaped our modern understanding of poetry by establishing expectations of what is a poem, what is a poet, and what is lyric poetry itself. The first comparative study of songbooks, the book concerns three vernacular traditions—Occitan, Middle High German, and Castilian—and analyzes how the songbook emerged from its original performance context of oral publication, into a medium for preservation, and finally became a literary object that performs the interests of poets and readers.

Her second book, The Subject of Crusade:Lyric, Romance, and Materials, 1150-1500 (University of Chicago Press, 2020) examines how the crusader subject of vernacular literature sought to reconcile secular ideals about love and chivalry with crusade. This study places this literature in dialogue with new ideas about penance and confession that emerged from the second half of the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth. Subject argues that poetic articulations are crucial for understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical phenomenon, and examines another version of speaking crusades, in which lyric, romance and materials such as tapestries, textiles, and tombstones manifest ambivalence about crusade ideals.

Academic Appointments

• Professor, French and Italian
• Professor (By courtesy), German Studies
• Professor (By courtesy), Comparative Literature

Administrative Appointments

• Assistant Professor by Courtesy, German Studies, Stanford University (2008 - Present)
• Assistant Professor of French and Italian, Stanford University (2008 - Present)
• Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
• Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
• Graduate Assistant, Bing Honors College (2005 - 2005)
• Teaching Assistant, Department of French and Italian, Stanford University (2002 - 2003)
• Graduate Assistant, Stanford University (2002 - 2002)
• Teaching Assistant, Stanford University (2001 - 2002)

Honors & Awards

• John Nicholas Brown Prize, for a first book or monograph of outstanding quality, The Medieval Academy of America (2016)
• Internal Faculty Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center (2012-2013)
• Charles Bernheimer Prize for the best dissertation in the field of comparative literature, American Comparative Literature Association (2008)
• Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center (2006-2007)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

• Project Manager, Division of Literature, Cultures and Languages (DLCL) Research Unit, Performing Trobar (2009 - Present)
• Project Manager, Stanford Humanities Laboratory, Crowds Project (2002 - 2006)
• Member, Modern Language Association (MLA), Executive Committee for the Discussion Group on Provençal Language and Literature (2009 - 2014)
• Junior Faculty Member of the Executive Committee, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2011 - 2012)
• Member, Search Committee for Open-Rank Professor of Medieval English Literature, Department of English, Stanford University (2012 - 2012)
• Evaluation Committee Member, Lopes Prize for Essays and Theses in Feminist Studies, Stanford University (2011 - 2011)
• Evaluation Committee Member, Tenured Associate Professor in German Studies, Stanford University (2011 - 2011)
• Member, Search Committee for Assistant Professor in Persian Literature and Culture, Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford University (2010 - 2010)
• Member, Search Committee for Architectural Historian, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University (2010 - 2010)
• Graduate Admissions Committee Member, Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford University (2002 - 2003)
• Member, Société Guilhem IX
• Member, Medieval Academy of America
• Member, Modern Language Association of America
• Member, International Courtly Literature Society (North American Branch)

Program Affiliations

• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Professional Education

• Ph.D., Stanford University, Comparative Literature (2007)
• B.A, Yale University, French (1999)