Karen Winstead's research interests include medieval literature, popular culture, medievalism, narrative, life-writing, gender and sexuality. She has published four monographs: Fifteenth-Century Lives; The Oxford History of Life-Writing, Volume 1: The Middle Ages; John Capgrave's Fifteenth Century; and Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England.  She has also translated and edited medieval lives of various female saints, and she has published essays on Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, and appropriations of the Middle Ages in film and contemporary novels.

Her teaching interests range from medieval literature to contemporary film and popular culture. She regularly teaches the Survey of British Literature to 1800, Special Topics in Women and Literature (“Medieval Women”), Special Topics in Film and Literature (“Monsters Without and Within”), Special Topics in Popular Culture (“Vampires”) and other topics in medieval literature at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2016 and 2019, she won the English Undergraduate Organization's Professor of the Year award, and in 2020, she won the English Graduate Organization’s Professor of the Year award.

Selected Publications

• Fifteenth-Century Lives: Writing Sainthood in England.  Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.
• The Oxford History of Life-Writing, Vol. 1: The Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• John Capgrave's Fifteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
• Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
• Chaste Passions: Middle English Virgin Martyr Legends (anthology of translations). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
• The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria by John Capgrave (translation). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.
• The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria by John Capgrave (edition). Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999.

Curriculum Vitae