Vera Geranpayeh

Bio

Vera Geranpayeh is a PhD candidate in German Studies. Her dissertation investigates how gender drives narrative in medieval German literature, engaging (feminist) narratology, structuralist approaches, and theories of minor characters. She examines how minor female figures catalyze narrative movement by disrupting the course of patriarchal progression, and how these structural dynamics reverberate across periods into modern literature. Her work develops a narratological framework that highlights their epistemic authority, grounded in Otherness, marked by exclusion from minne.

In addition, she pursues a project on the 1593 Hohenlohe cookbook, focusing on domestic authorship, female custodianship of knowledge, and the cultural transmission of culinary practices in early modern German aristocratic households.

She is co-initiator of SCRIPTA, an interdisciplinary research group on gender, knowledge, and agency in premodern manuscript cultures that combines theoretical discussion with hands-on archival work in Stanford’s Special Collections and hosts workshops with guest scholars from other institutions.

Her broader research spans queer survival, female bonds, and desire in nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle German literature. She is the recipient of the Clayman Institute’s 2025 Marilyn Yalom Research Prize.

Honors & Awards

• Marilyn Yalom Research Prize, Clayman Institute for Gender Research (2025)
• Stipend, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (2023-2024)
• Stipend, Dr. Leonhard Baak Memorial Scholarship (2022-2024)
• Stipend, Max Kade Foundation (2022-2024)

Education & Certifications

• M.A., University of Colorado, Boulder, German Studies
• B.A., Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, North American Studies and English: Language, Literatures, and Cultures
• DAF/DAZ Certificate, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Interkulturelle Germanistik

Service, Volunteer and Community Work

• SCRIPTA: Gender, Knowledge, and Agency in the Premodern Western European World, Stanford University

  SCRIPTA (Studies in Coded Reading, Identity, Performance, Text, and Agency (800–1700)) is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research group dedicated to investigating how textual form, gender, and agency are encoded, enacted, and transmitted in medieval and early modern manuscript cultures. While grounded in close textual and material study, SCRIPTA insists on a bidirectional methodology: not only do we apply modern critical frameworks—such as gender and feminist theory, ecocriticism, and poststructuralist thought—to premodern materials, we also ask how premodern texts and practices challenge, nuance, or even reconfigure our current models of identity, knowledge, and power. SCRIPTA brings together scholars from the fields of literature, history and art history and enables new forms of collaboration across disciplinary and methodological boundaries.
  Our inquiry centers on the manuscript as a site of tension and negotiation between embodied performance and textual transmission. We encourage and support participants to engage directly with unstudied manuscripts in Stanford’s Special Collections, exploring how scribal practices, paratextual features, and codicological forms shape meaning and agency.
  SCRIPTA is committed to cultivating a sustained intellectual community that centers mentorship, collaborative inquiry, and graduate student development. By offering structured opportunities for graduate students to engage with both faculty and peers across disciplines, the group fosters a supportive environment for testing ideas, refining research questions, and integrating manuscript work into dissertation projects. The group’s structure—balancing theoretical seminars, hands-on archival exploration, and public-facing scholarship—enables students to build critical skills while contributing meaningfully to broader scholarly conversations. Graduate students will also benefit from exposure to leading scholars in the field, opening avenues for professional development and long-term research collaboration.

  Location

  Stanford