Johannes Junge Ruhland

I am a scholar of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval French literature, with a focus on manuscript culture and material book practices. My research explores how authors, scribes, readers, and audiences participated in forms of literacy that placed the manuscript book at the center of meaning-making. I am a member of the Medieval French in the Midwest research group and am affiliated at Notre Dame with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Medieval Institute, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Center for Italian Studies.

My recent work concentrates on manuscripts containing historical narratives in prose, especially the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, the Grandes Chroniques de France, and the Bible historiale. I examine how the material presentation of texts shapes readers’ understanding of history and historical writing. My first monograph, currently under review, foregrounds the bookishness of French prose histories, argues that historical writing occurred in manuscript workshops as well as historians’ studies, and analyzes the implications of reading history in books. Related work has appeared in Medium Ævum, in the edited volume Making History with Manuscripts in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (De Gruyter, 2025), and in the forthcoming special issue of Romanic Review, "Through Hartog's Lens: Regimes of Historicity in Medieval French History Books (ca. 1240-ca. 1560)," co-edited with Antoine Brix. A second monograph project investigates how reading so-called “bad histories” in manuscript contexts can reframe their literary and cultural significance.

I also work on medieval French debate literature and on medieval theorizations of textuality, which you can read about in French Studies, Romania, and, soon, in JMEMS. In teaching, I emphasize manuscripts, debate, courtly love, human–animal relations, and transferable skills in writing and speaking.