Kristen May Mills

Academic interests

I research the history of emotions (focusing on grief and mourning), the cultural history of death and dying, and constructions of gender in the literatures of medieval Ireland, Britain, and Iceland.

My current project is a comparative study of how medieval authors/redactors use depictions of burial, death, and the dead to articulate and emphasize connections between place and identity, in order to advance claims of cultural, ancestral primacy over contested or colonized landscapes. The main focus of the project will be on vernacular and Latin texts composed in Ireland and Britain (primarily Wales and the Welsh Marches) during and after the period of Norman colonization, but I will also be looking at texts from medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England.  

Background

Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2012

          Dissertation Title: “Grief, Gender, and Mourning in Medieval North Atlantic Literature”

M.A. in Medieval Studies, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2006

B.A. in English (magna cum laude), Cornell University, 2005

Positions held

• Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Haverford College (2015-17)

• Lecturer, Program in Celtic Studies, University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto (2014-2015)

• Lecturer, Department of English, Trent University (2014-2015)

• Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Celtic Studies, St. Francis Xavier University (2013-14)

Courses taught

• Cross-Cultural Lament Traditions, Haverford College

• Living with the Dead: Attitudes towards Death in Medieval Britain, Haverford College

• Legends of Arthur, Haverford College

• Vikings, Haverford College

• The Celtic Book, University of Toronto

• Celtic Folklore, University of Toronto

• Celtic Literature and Society, 400-1500, University of Toronto

• Foundations in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Trent University

• Celtic Civilization I, St. Francis Xavier University

• Celtic Civilization II, St. Francis Xavier University

• Celtic Christianity, St. Francis Xavier University

• Celtic Paganism, St. Francis Xavier University

• Celtsploitation: Celts in Pop Culture, St. Francis Xavier University

• Arthurian Tradition in Britain, St. Francis Xavier University

• Ecclesiastical Latin I, Oratory of St. Philip Neri, Toronto

• Ecclesiastical Latin II, Oratory of St. Philip Neri, Toronto