Associate Professor of Romance Studies
Research and Teaching
Irit Kleiman teaches courses on the literatures and cultures of medieval and Renaissance France in a global context, and serves on the faculty of the BU Core Curriculum in the Humanities.
Her interdisciplinary research asks questions about the dialogue between literature and the Law, the writing of history, the cultural production of memory, affect, material culture, and sensory encounters, especially tactile. Much of her critical writing is informed by an ongoing engagement with the intellectual legacies of psychoanalysis.
Kleiman’s book, Philippe de Commynes: Memory, Betrayal, Text (University of Toronto Press, 2013), received the Newberry Library’s Weiss/Brown Award. She is also the editor of Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
More broadly, she has written and given public talks about topics including popular imaginings of Judas Iscariot, the adventures of King Arthur’s knights, the extravagant luxuries of the Burgundian court, and the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
Her latest book (in manuscript) centers on the crusading memoir of Jean de Joinville, often called the “Life of Saint Louis.”
Her newest projects turn their attention to the intersections between gendered embodiment and literary re-imaginings of the political.