Dr. Lisa Weston teaches a variety of Medieval Literature courses within Fresno State's
Department of English. She was born in England and raised there and in Canada before
immigrating to the United States. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA, where she studied
Old and Middle English, Medieval Latin, Norse and Celtic literatures. Dr. Weston has
published widely on Old English wisdom poetry and magico-ritual texts, on the works
of women writers including Baudonivia of Poitiers and Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, and
on constructions of gender and sexuality in monastic liturgy and hagiography. Her
current research uses feminist and queer theory to explore the inter-connections of
sexuality and literacy in Anglo-Saxon and Old English literature. Her 1995 article
"Women's Medicine, Women's Magic: The Old English Metrical Childbirth Charms" was
reprinted as exemplar of newer critical approaches to problematic texts in Old English Literature: A Guide to Criticism with Selected Readings (2016). More recent publications include chapters in the Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature (2013), The Lesbian Premodern (2011), and Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages (2001). With Carol Braun Pasternack, she edited Sex and Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England (2004). She has also presented her research at numerous national and international
conferences, and she maintains leadership and advisory positions in organizations
such as the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association, the Society for
Medieval Feminist Research and the Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle
Ages. In addition to Medieval Studies, Dr. Weston also enjoys a secondary scholarly
interest in contemporary popular culture and the visual arts. Her collage pieces have
appeared in the department's annual literary journal, the San Joaquin Review.
