Lara Farina

Lara Farina specializes in medieval literature and culture, sensory studies, and histories of embodiment. She is the author of Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious Writing (Palgrave) and of articles on practices of reading, sensory history, and material culture. From 2015–2020, she also edited of the award-winning journal postmedieval (https://link.springer.com/journal/41280 ).

Her ongoing research focuses on the sense of touch in the Middle Ages and on imaginations (both premodern and modern) of non-human/non-normative forms of perception. Her interest in medieval ideas about the sensitivities of plants resulted in a visual exhibit on herbals and herbaria that has been displayed at academic and public libraries and the WV Botanic Garden.

Select Publications

“Remote Sensing: Touch at a Distance.” Exemplaria 35.4 (forthcoming, 2023), cluster eds. Harry Cushman, Richard Newhauser, and Arthur Russell.

“An Old English Poetics of Comfort.” The Yearbook of English Studies 52, eds. Clare A. Lees and Joshua Davis. 2022.

The Middle Shore. Online: Electric Press, 2018. (An online, collaborative project on the affective dimensions of collecting and curating fragmentary artifacts.  The site includes exhibits, essays, and audio files, and will host continuing installations.) http://electric.press/titles.html

“Vegetal Continuity and the Naming of Species,” in Premodern Plants, a special issue of postmedieval, eds. Robert Barratt and Vin Nardizzi. 2018.

“Get a Grip: The Tactile Object of Handlyng Synne,” in Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions Through History, eds. Stephanie Downes, et al. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2018.

“Curl,” in Veer Ecology, eds. Jeffrey J. Cohen and Lowell Duckert. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota UP, 2017. (On imaginations of vegetal sensation in medieval and modern speculative fiction.)

“Wondrous Skins and Tactile Affection: The Blemmyae’s Touch.” in Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. Katie Walter. New York and London: Palgrave, 2013.

The Intimate Senses, special issue of postmedieval co-edited with Holly Dugan. 2012.