Education:
- Duke University, B.A.
- Rutgers University, M.A. and Ph.D.
Nicole Smith specializes in late medieval literature, with special interest in Chaucer, vernacular guides of pastoral care, and material culture. She has published the definitive scholarly edition of A Christian Mannes Bileeve, a fourteenth-century explanation of the Apostles' Creed with Middle English Texts (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021). Her monograph, Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), examines the connection between dress, romance, and moral behavior in medieval vernacular texts and their figurations of fashionable aristocrats. In addition to preparing a critical edition of a Middle English guide to penance, The Clensyng of Mannes Sowle, she is presently thinking about Middle English lyric poems in preaching manuals. She has published essays in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Notes & Queries, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, and Medium Ævum. Her fellowships include an NEH Summer Stipend and an NEH Summer Seminar on the seven deadly sins in the Middle Ages. In 2015, she became University Distinguished Teaching Professor after having won UNT's President's Council Teaching Award and the J.H. Shelton Excellence in Teaching Award. She is inspired by enthusiastic students and intrigued by strange texts.
Selected Publications
A Christian Mannes Bileeve, Middle English Texts 60 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021).
"The Thinking Heart of Female Spirituality and the Apostles' Creed in A Christian Mannes Bileeve," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 48.2 (May 2018)
"Crafting an Edition: From Manuscript to Print" in "What Does It Mean to Read a Text from Medieval England?," Open Access Companion to the "Canterbury Tales." November 2017. Web.
Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)
"Middle English Lyrics, Homo vide, and A Christian Mannes Bileeve," Notes & Queries 62.1 (2015): 17-22
"Love, Peraldus, and the Parson's Tale," Notes & Queries 60.4 (2013): 498-502
