Jeanette Patterson
Associate Professor; Associate Professor, Undergraduate Director
Romance Languages and Literatures; Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP); Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Background
Jeanette Patterson is affiliated with and teaches courses in French, TRIP (Translation Research and Instruction Program), Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and Religious Studies.
Her research primarily focuses on medieval French literature and Bible translation, with secondary interests in transhistorical language politics, digital humanities, political rewritings of biblical narratives, taboos and (self-)censorship in translation, and gender in translation. Her book Making the Bible French: The ‘Bible historiale’ and the Medieval Lay Reader, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022, concerns the most prominent medieval translation of the Bible into French, Guyart des Moulins’s 1295 Bible historiale, its manuscript tradition and its cultural import.
In addition to that book and several articles and projects related to the Bible historiale and its engagement with medieval politics, theology, art and literature, she has published multiple articles and book chapters on Christine de Pizan’s translations and one on 20th-century language politics. She has also co-edited two books, Rethinking the New Medievalism and Paroles et images sur le commencement: le discours des peintures de la Chapelle de Merléac and has served as the Manuscript Studies Editor and then Open Issue Editor of Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures from its founding in 2012 to 2024.
Publications
- Making the Bible French: The Bible historiale and the Medieval Lay Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022.
- “Solomon au feminin: (Re)translating Proverbs 31 in Christine de Pizan’s Cité des dames.”Mediaevalia 36/37 (2015/2016), special issue, "Medieval Futures," guest-editor, Marilynn Desmond. 353-392.
- “Stolen Scriptures: The Bible historiale and the Hundred Years’ War,” Rethinking the Boundaries of Patronage. Ed. Deborah L. McGrady. Special issue of Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval
Cultures 2:2 (Fall 2013), 155-180. - “Interpreting Job’s Silence in the Bible historiale,” Modern Language Notes 127:5 Supplement (December 2012), S217-S242.
- Paroles et images sur le commencement : le discours des peintures de la Chapelle de Merléac. Co-edited with Xavier-Laurent Salvador. Orléans: Paradigme, 2019.
Education
- Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University
- M.A. Tulane University
- B.A. Tulane University
Research Interests
- Medieval French Bible translation and adaptation
- Taboos in translation
- Christine de Pizan and translation
- Political uses of biblical narratives
- Manuscript studies
Teaching Interests
- Taboos in Translation (TRIP/LING)
- Reimagining the Bible (MDVL/COLI)
- Politics of the French Language (FREN/TRIP)
- Among the Animals (FREN)
- French Translation (FREN/TRIP)
