Anne Elise Crafton

I study the relationship of gender, language, and speech in medieval English, Norse, and Scots literature. I am interested in literary representation of gendered speech and speech acts, literary moments where illicit speech becomes licit, the impacts of gendered obscenities, and the ways in which literary dialogue enables play with gender through cross-gender ventriloquism.

My dissertation, "You Sound Like a Wif: The Representation of Women's Speech in Old English Literature," studies women's speech in the extant vernacular texts to determine whether (1) anti-feminist rhetoric on the evils of women's speech exists in pre-Conquest England, (2) early English authors saw gender performance and speech as connected, and (3) there are any gender-based patterns in the representation of speech.