Nicole Rice

Professor

St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ph.D., 2002, Columbia UniversityM.Phil., 1997, University of CambridgeB.A., 1995, Yale University

Nicole R. Rice joined the St. John’s University English Department in September 2008. Her undergraduate and graduate courses cover topics including medieval drama, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, sex and gender, and medieval romance. Dr. Rice’s scholarship explores connections among late medieval religious culture, social life, and expressive modes such as prose, poetry, and drama. Her first book, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (Cambridge, 2008), analyzes the Middle English prose guides that developed to adapt professional religious rules and routines for lay readers. An edited collection of essays on Middle English spiritual texts, entitled Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations, appeared in 2013. Collaborative projects with Dr. Margaret A. Pappano of Queen’s University include a co-edited special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Fall 2013) on the topic of artisan culture, and a book entitled The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity in Premodern England (Notre Dame, 2015). This work received the 2016 David Bevington Award from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society for the best new book in early drama studies. Dr. Rice’s essays have appeared in journals including Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Comparative Drama, and Journal of the History of Sexuality. She received a 2018 NEH Fellowship to work on her current book project, Hospitals and Literary Production in England, 1350-1550.

Published Books

The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity in Premodern England. Monograph co-written with Margaret A. Pappano. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015. ReFormations series.
Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Readers, Texts and Transformations. Edited collection.

Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies series 21. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.
Contributed Introduction and Chapter 5: “Lay Spiritual Texts and Pastoral Care in Two Fifteenth-Century Priests’ Collections.”

Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature. Monograph.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Book in Contract

Manuscript Culture and Medieval Devotional Traditions: Essays in honour of Michael G. Sargent. Co-edited with Jennifer N. Brown. Forthcoming from York Medieval Press.

Book Project

Hospitals and Literary Production in England, 1350-1550.
A monograph on the literary cultures of several premodern English hospitals. This study aims to understand how hospital residents, patrons, and associates used textual means to foster devotional practice, promote themselves in the civic sphere, respond to controversy, and negotiate the administration of charity from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries.

Journal Special Issue

The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43.3 (Fall 2013). Co-edited with Margaret A. Pappano.
Topic: medieval and early modern artisan culture. Co-wrote Introduction.

Essays

“Forming Holiness in a Lollard Ave Maria Commentary.” Yearbook of Langland Studies31 (2017): 159-87.

“Law, Farce, and Counter-Kingship in the Semur Fall of Lucifer.” Comparative Drama 49.2 (Summer 2015): 163-189.

“Lay Spiritual Texts and Pastoral Care in Two Fifteenth-Century Priests’ Collections.”

Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Readers, Texts, and Transformations. Ed. Nicole R. Rice. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies series 21. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. 149-177.

“Reformist Devotional Reading: The Pore Caitif in British Library, MS Harley 2322.” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium VII (2011). Ed. A. E. Jones. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. 177-193.

“‘Temples to Christ’s Indwelling’: Forms of Chastity in a Barking Abbey Manuscript.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19.1 (2010): 115-132.

‘“Whom seek ye, sirs?’ The Logic of Searching in the York Herod and the Magi.” Comparative Drama 43.1 (2009): 89-112.

“‘Beginning and Beginning-Again’: Processions, Plays, and Civic Politics in York and Chester.” Co-written with Margaret A. Pappano. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 30 (2008): 269-301.

“Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life and the Transformation of Clerical Discipline in a Fifteenth-Century Priest’s Miscellany.” Leeds Studies in English New Series 38 (2007): 143-169.

“Profitable Devotions: Bodley MS 423, Guildhall MS 7114, and a Sixteenth-Century London Pewterer.” Journal of the Early Book Society 10 (2007): 173-181.

“Devotional Literature and Lay Spiritual Authority: imitatio clerici in Book to a Mother.”The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35.2 (2005): 187-216.

“Spiritual Ambition and the Translation of the Cloister: The Abbey and Charter of the Holy Ghost.” Viator 33 (2002): 222-260.

Forthcoming Essays

“Devotional Compilation and Lollard Sanctity,” in “This tretice, by me compiled”: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denison, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2018).

“Artisan Drama, Patronage, and Fellowship Reconfigured: The Chester Shepherds in 1578,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 49.2 (May 2019).

“The Feminine Prehistory of the York Purification: St. Leonard’s Hospital, Civic Drama, and Women’s Devotion,” forthcoming in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.

Encyclopedia Entries

“Devotional Texts” and “The Chester Cycle.” Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Medieval British Literature. Ed. Siân Echard and Richard Rouse. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Book Reviews

Ellen K. Rentz. Imagining the Parish in Late Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2017.

Amy Appleford, Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 2016.

Christina Maria Cervone, Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2014): 270-275.

Kirsty Campbell, The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2010. Speculum 87.4 (October 2012): 1169-1171.

A Companion to ‘The Doctrine of the Hert’: The Middle English Translation and its Latin and European Contexts. Ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2010. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63.2 (2012): 391-393.

Margaret Rogerson, Playing a Part in History: The York Mysteries, 1951-2006. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Comparative Drama 43.4 (2009): 528-532.

Diane Watt, Medieval Women’s Writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100-1500. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. Speculum 84.3 (2009): 787-789.

The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature. Ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski et al. New York: Palgrave, 2002. The Medieval Review 2003.

INVITED LECTURES

“St. Leonard’s Hospital and Civic Performance: the Prehistory of the York Purification.”
Harvard University Medieval Colloquium. November 2016.

“Devotional Compilation and Lollard Sanctity.” Keynote lecture.
Conference on Devotional Compilations. Lausanne, Switzerland, April 2016.

“Artisan Drama and the Transformation of Work in the Premodern City.”
With Margaret A. Pappano.

New York University Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center, Distinguished Speaker Series.
New York, November 2012.

“The Pore Caitif and Lollard Devotion.”
The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium VII.
Charney Manor, Oxfordshire, UK, July 2011.

“Damned Judges and Merchants: Artisan Identity in the Chester Weavers’ Last Judgment.”
Medieval Club of New York, March 2011.

“A Middle English Devotional Compilation and a Sixteenth-Century London Pewterer.”
Medieval and Tudor London Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London, June 2007.

“Beginning to Play: Light-bearing, Civic Controversy, and the Chester ‘Fall of Lucifer’ Pageant.”
Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium, Yale Department of English, November 2005.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

“Hospital books from Bristol: amending life and anticipating death.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2019.

“Devotional Reading and Display at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.” Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, Harlaxton Manor, UK, July 18, 2018.

“The Corruption and Purification of Women at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.” NYU Medieval and Renaissance Center Spring Conference: “The Worlds that Plague Made: Cultures of Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern Period.” April 13-14, 2018.

“The Chester Shepherds in 1578: Intergenerational Performance, Patronage, and Livery.” American Society of Theatre Research, Atlanta, Georgia, November 18, 2017.
“Civic Play Revivals: Artisan Drama without Artisans?

Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 2017.

“The Drama of Purification and Cultural Change in York.”
On the Peripheries of the Reformation: Conference of the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium. Toronto, Ontario, October 2016.

“Forming Holiness in a Lollard Devotional Collection.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2015.

“Baking, Mastery, and Drama in Premodern Chester.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2014.

“Law, Satire, and the Origins of Transgression in the Semur Fall of Lucifer.”
Renaissance Society of America, New York, NY, March 2014.

“Civic Charity, the Mercers’ Hospital, and the York Last Judgment.” Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2012.

“Inclusive and Exclusive Devotion: A Lollard Pore Caitiff in British Library MS Harley 2322.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2010.

“Visions of the Religious Life in Two Fifteenth-Century Women’s Anthologies.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2005.

“Middle English Spiritual Guides and Clerical Reading Practices.”
Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, Miami, FL, April 2005.

“Beginning to Play: The Struggle for Civic Theatre in York and Chester,” with Margaret A. Pappano.
New Medievalisms Conference, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, March 2005.

“Book to a Mother and the Imitation of the Son.”
Columbia Medieval Guild Conference, Columbia University, New York, NY, October 2003.

“Bodleian Library MS Bodley 423 as a Mercantile Devotional Collection.”
Biannual Conference of the Early Book Society, Durham, England, July 2003.

“Spiritual Profit in the City: Devotional Reading and the London Pewterers’ Guild.”
Columbia University Medieval and Renaissance Conference, New York, NY, April 2003.

“The Uses of The Prick of Conscience in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Collections.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2002.

“From Cloistre to Abbey to Charter: Translation and Adaptation of Devotional Guidance.”
Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, Tempe, AZ, March 2001.

Elisabeth of Schönau and the Benedictine Sisterhood.”
Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1999.

“Martha, Mary, and the Mixed Life in Bridget of Sweden’s Revelations.”
Annual Conference of the Columbia University Medieval Guild, New York, NY, November, 1997.

PANELS ORGANIZED

“Medieval Drama: Performance Matters,” with Susan Nakley, St. Joseph’s University.
Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2019.

“Vernacular Drama and Liturgy in Text and Performance,” with Donna Bussell, University of Illinois, Springfield. Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2008.