Overview
Author of two books, Another Reality: Metamorphosis and the Imagination in the Poetry of Ovid, Petrarch, and Ronsard and Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, and more than fifty articles and book chapters, Kathleen Long now focuses her work on early modern theories of gender and of non-normative corporealities. Her particular interests are in the relationship between gender, bodily, and behavioral norms and early modern theories of political order, as well as the circulation of very different ideas concerning natural variation’s crucial role in human survival and thriving. She teaches courses on disability studies, religious violence in literature from the crusades to the Algerian War of Independence, and monsters. She is the editor of three volumes: High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France; Religious Differences in France; and Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe, and co-editor for a series on Monsters and Marvels: Alterity in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (Amsterdam University Press). Her current projects include a translation into English of The Island of Hermaphrodites (L’isle des hermaphrodites), a monograph on literature in the wake of the French Wars of Religion (Bringing up the Dead), and a study of early modern theories of disability and gender difference, The Premodern Postnormal.
Research Focus
- Gender and Sexuality in the Early Modern World
- History and Theory of the Monstrous
- History of Science/Alchemy
- Religious Violence
Publications
Recent Publications
Books
Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe (Ashgate, 2006; Reprint, Routledge, 2016)
Edited volumes
Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture (Ashgate, November 2010; Reprint, Routledge, 2016)
Religious Differences in France (Truman State University Press, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies series, 2006)
High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 2002)
Articles and Book Chapters (since 2017)
“Seeing the Forest for the Trees: The Ethics and Politics of Environmentalism in Early Modern France,” Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes, special issue on La question environnementale (forthcoming, 2024).
“Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592): Elephant Theologians,” for a volume on Animal Theologians, Clair Linzey, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2023).
“Disorientation as a Conversion Machine in The Island of Hermaphrodites (1605) and the Scenographiae of Hans Vredeman de Vries (1560-1601),” for the volume, Conversion Machines, Bronwen Wilson and Paul Yachnin, eds. (University of Edinburgh Press, 2023).
“Bringing up the Dead: The Role of the Grotesque in Literature after the Wars of Religion in France,” Violence, Trauma and Memory: Warfare from the Hundred Years’ War to the Thirty Years’ War, ed. Alexandra Onuf and Nicholas Ealy (Lexington Books, 2022) 67-94.
“Dining with the Hermaphrodites: Courtly Excess and Dietary Manuals in Early Modern France,” Romanic Review, special issue on literature and medicine, Colette Winn and Julia Singer, editors (May 2022).
“Shaping Bodies, Reimagining the World: Sartorial Prosthesis in L’Isle des hermaphrodites (1605),” L’Esprit Créateur, special issue on Disability’s Worldmaking (December 2021)
“Intersex and Transgender: The Case of Marin le Marcis,” for a volume on Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern, Anna Klosowska, Greta LaFleur, and Masha Raskolnikov, eds. (Cornell University Press, 2021).
“Styling Sedition in The Island of Hermaphrodites (L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 1605),” for a volume on Sedition.The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c. 1550-1610, ed. Marc Schachter and John O’Brien (Brepols, 2021).
“Monsters and the Monstrous: Witches and Werewolves in Early Modern French and Italian Tales,” in A Cultural History of Fairy Tales (The Age of the Marvelous), Suzanne Magnanini, ed. (Bloomsbury Press, 2021).
“Rereading Space in The Island of Hermaphrodites,” Early Modern Visions of Space: France and Beyond, Dorothea Heitsch and Jeremie Korta, eds. (University of North Carolina Press, 2021).
“La Mollesse cultivée dans L’Isle des Hermaphrodites,” Mollesses renaissantes. Défaillances et assouplissement du masculine, Daniele Maira et Teodoro Patera, eds. (Droz, 2021).
“Montaigne, théoricien de la monstruosité,” Théories critiques et littérature de la Renaissance, Todd W. Reeser and David LaGuardia, eds. (Garnier, 2021).
“Cities of the Dead: Utopian Spaces, the Grotesque, and the Work of Melancholy,” for the Lovis Corinth Colloquium IX, Landscape and the Visual Hermeneutics of Place, 1500-1700, Walter Melion and Karl Enenkel, eds. (Brill, 2020).
“Afterword,” Exceptional Bodies in Early Modern Culture, Maja Bondestam, ed. (Amsterdam University Press, 2020).
“‘The Beauty of Violence in the Seventh Tale of François de Rosset’s Histoires tragiques and Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly’s ‘Une Page d’Histoire.’” The Dark Thread: From Histoires tragiques to Gothic Novel, John Lyons, ed. (University of Delaware Press, 2019).
“From Monstrosity to Postnormality: Montaigne, Canguilhem, Foucault,” for a volume on Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World, Asa Mittman and Rick Godden (Palgrave, 2019).
“Violent Words for Violent Times: Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques,” in Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion, Katherine S. Maynard and Jeff Kendrick, eds. (Medieval Institute Publications, 2019).
“Illegible Bodies: Reading Intersex and Transgender in Early Modern France (The Case of Isaac de Benserade’s Iphis et Iante),” Transversions of Iphis and Ianthe, Valerie Traub, Peggy McCracken, and Patricia Badir, eds. (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
“Intersex/ Transgender.” Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory, Robin Truth Goodman, ed. (Bloomsbury, 2019).
“‘Trans*historicities’: A Roundtable Discussion,” with M. W. Bychowski, Howard Chiang, Jack Halberstam, Jacob Lau, Marcia Ochoa, and C. Riley Snorton, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 4 (November 2018), 658-685.
“L’épopée au féminin,” Les Tragiques: 1616-2016. Littérature, violence, et politique. Actes du Colloque Internationale de Niort, 21-23 Septembre 2016, Jean Raymond-Fanlo, ed. (Albineana, December, 2018).
“Montaigne’s Mercurial Masculinity: The Alchemy of Gendered Identity in the Essais.” Monstrous Borders, Jana Byars and Hans Broedel, eds. (Routledge, 2018).
“Montaigne, Monsters, and Modernity,” Itineraries in French Renaissance Literature, Jeff Persels, Kendall Tarte, and George Hoffman, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
“Using Cruelty to teach Empathy in Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques,” Emotional and Affective Narratives in pre-Modern Europe/ Late-Medieval and Renaissance France, Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier and Andreea Marculescu, eds. (Palgrave, 2017).
Grants and Awards (2008-present)
- Faculty Fellow in Engaged Learning (2020-2021)
- The Mellon-Mowat Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library (2019-2020)
- The Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award (2019)
- Central New York Humanities Corridor/ Mellon Foundation Grant: Scientific Norms and the Concept of the Normal (2018-present)
- The Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Advising (2008)
Administrative Service to the College (current)
- Director, Global Early Modern Studies Colloquium (GEMS 2017-)
Service to the Profession (current)
- Series editor (with Luke Morgan), Monsters and Marvels: Alterity in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, Amsterdam University Press https://www.aup.nl/en/series/monsters-and-marvels-alterity-in-the-medieval-and-early-modern-worlds (2018-)
- Member of the Board, ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018-)
- Member, Early Modern Conversions research team (SSHRC funded), 2014-2019
- Member, Committee for the Lois Roth Award/ Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work, Modern Language Association (2017-2019)
In the news
- New edited volume explores plurality of gender experiences
- Conference will explore bodies and conversion
- Renowned spoken word poet Porsha O to perform March 9
- Sociologist discusses links between breastfeeding, fertility