Nicholas Hoffman

Pronouns:

He/him/his

Nicholas Hoffman is a second-year PhD student working on medieval English literature from the late Anglo-Saxon to early Middle English periods (roughly the 10th through the 13th centuries). His primary research interests include medieval discourses around sex and sexuality, the body, and Christian epistemology. He is also interested in how resonances of the medieval past endure in modern culture. His work treats a variety of Old English, early Middle English, and Latin textual forms, including sermons, homilies, penitentials, hagiography, and medical manuals.

Most recently, Hoffman has looked at sexuality and the formation of queerness and identity in Anglo-Saxon penitentials and homilies. His current research focuses on Ancrene Wisse, an early Middle English handbook for anchoresses, and its relationship to thirteenth-century medical discourse, both Latin and vernacular. He is also co-writing a paper on medieval pedagogy and the ways in which the academy can include more radical and underrepresented voices in its treatment of medievalism.