Nicole Rice

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.