Nicholas Babich

Research and teaching interests

I am interested in the interaction between secular and sacred content and narrative types in medieval texts. My dissertation project, which will hopefully become a monograph on the subject, used narrative theory, medieval rhetoric, and theological interlocutors to describe "conversion of narrative," which I found in several texts that oddly juxtaposed seemingly unlike "secular" and "sacred elements." Writing the dissertation led me along the way to study biblical allegory, medieval literary allegory, Boethius' theory and poetry (The Consolation of Philosophy) and literary rhetoric in the Middle Ages. My work aims to present new, systematic, and more nuanced approaches to traditionally puzzling structures in medieval narrative texts. My other methodological interests lie in some new currents in postcritique, postsecularism, and manuscript studies. As a postdoctoral fellow, I hope to work more in the scholarship of monastic poetics, literary continuity between "Old" and "Middle" English, and the gendered mystical poetry of Hildegard of Bingen.

Representative publications

“Nam Virtus Perficitur in Infirmitate: Christian Baptism of the Heroic Tradition and The Battle of Maldon.” Pennsylvania State University Honors Thesis. May 2019.

Representative presentations