James Paz
After receiving my PhD from King’s College London in 2013, I lectured for a brief spell at the University of Leeds, before being appointed as Lecturer in Early Medieval English Literature at the University of Manchester in September 2014. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022.
I am the author of Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture (Manchester University Press, 2017) and the co-editor (with Carl Kears) of Medieval Science Fiction (KCLMS, 2016). I have published peer-reviewed articles in Exemplaria, the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, New Medieval Literatures and Postmedieval, and have published chapters in various edited collections, including a contribution to the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Medieval Literature and Science.
My current research includes a book-length study of the literary forms of early medieval science and a collaborative creative-critical project on translating the nonhuman across medieval and modern literatures.
I am one of the General Editors of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture book series: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/manchester-medieval-literature-and-culture/
At Manchester, I teach a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on topics such as Beowulf, Old English literature, Middle English literature, modern medievalism, translation and critical theory. Since March 2018, I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I welcome proposals from research students interested in working on any aspect of Old English or medieval literary culture, including (but not limited to) the following topics: the links between early medieval literature and material culture; the relationships between humans and nonhumans in early medieval literature; modern medievalism (especially in science fiction and fantasy); theoretical approaches to medieval literatures (especially new materialism and ecocriticism); translation and creative-critical responses to early medieval poetry.
In 2017, I co-organised (with Prof David Matthews) the biennial MAMO: Middle Ages in the Modern World international conference. From 2016-19, I served on the committee for TOEBI (Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland) and I organised and hosted the annual TOEBI conference at Manchester in 2019. In June 2023, I co-organised (with Dr Charles Insley) and hosted the biennial ISSEME: International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England conference.
Email: James.Paz@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter: @James_A_Paz
I am the author of Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture (Manchester University Press, 2017) and the co-editor (with Carl Kears) of Medieval Science Fiction (KCLMS, 2016). I have published peer-reviewed articles in Exemplaria, the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, New Medieval Literatures and Postmedieval, and have published chapters in various edited collections, including a contribution to the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Medieval Literature and Science.
My current research includes a book-length study of the literary forms of early medieval science and a collaborative creative-critical project on translating the nonhuman across medieval and modern literatures.
I am one of the General Editors of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture book series: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/manchester-medieval-literature-and-culture/
At Manchester, I teach a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on topics such as Beowulf, Old English literature, Middle English literature, modern medievalism, translation and critical theory. Since March 2018, I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I welcome proposals from research students interested in working on any aspect of Old English or medieval literary culture, including (but not limited to) the following topics: the links between early medieval literature and material culture; the relationships between humans and nonhumans in early medieval literature; modern medievalism (especially in science fiction and fantasy); theoretical approaches to medieval literatures (especially new materialism and ecocriticism); translation and creative-critical responses to early medieval poetry.
In 2017, I co-organised (with Prof David Matthews) the biennial MAMO: Middle Ages in the Modern World international conference. From 2016-19, I served on the committee for TOEBI (Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland) and I organised and hosted the annual TOEBI conference at Manchester in 2019. In June 2023, I co-organised (with Dr Charles Insley) and hosted the biennial ISSEME: International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England conference.
Email: James.Paz@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter: @James_A_Paz
less
InterestsView All (17)
Uploads
Books by James Paz
We may like to believe that we are seeing and hearing the voices of Anglo-Saxon men and women through these things, but why did humans so often feel the need to talk with the things around them – lending voice to, and receiving voice from, a sword, a shield, a tree, a bone, a cross? Their words are not whispered or shouted to us across the centuries but cut or carved or scratched or inked. These early medieval voices are embodied but the ‘bodies’ that bear them are not fleshy human ones; they are calfskin, whalebone, sculpted stone, twisted gold.
This book examines the surprising agency and talkativeness displayed by nonhumans in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture. Drawing on thing theory, it argues that ‘things’ do not simply carry human voices across time but change them, reshaping or even subverting the messages intended by their original patrons, makers or possessors.
Fourteen groundbreaking new essays, intended for medievalist and science fiction audiences alike, consider where, how and why ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ interact in medieval literature; they explore the ways in which works of modern science fiction illuminate medieval counterparts; but they also identify both the presence and absence of the medieval past in SF history and criticism. Contributors include medievalists and early modernists, science fiction critics and authors, historians of science and research astronomers, with each essay providing a unique perspective on the intersections between science, fiction and the medieval.
From the science and fictions of Beowulf to the medieval and post-medieval appearances of the Green Children of Woolpit; from time travel in the legend of the Seven Sleepers to the medievalism of Star Trek; from manmade marvels in medieval manuscripts to the blurring of medieval magic and futuristic technology in tales of the dying earth; from courtly love on Mars in the novels of E.R. Burroughs to a medieval aesthetic of science fiction called ‘catapunk’: these essays repeatedly rethink the simplistic divides that have been set up between modern and pre-modern texts. The variety of studies collected here uncover striking resonances across time and space while also revealing how the two most popular genres of today – science fiction and fantasy – have been constructed around conceptions, and misconceptions, about the Middle Ages.
Medieval Science Fiction will appeal to anyone interested in medieval literature, medieval science and technology, medievalism, genre fiction and science fiction studies.
http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=15157
Chapters by James Paz
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526133731/
https://boydellandbrewer.com/slow-scholarship-hb.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvktrxwz
Articles by James Paz
READ THIS OPEN-ACCESS ARTICLE HERE: https://ims.leeds.ac.uk/article/the-animality-of-work-and-craft-in-early-medieval-english-literature/
My reassessment of the Old English texts under discussion will help to break down the barriers that terms like “superstition” have put up and thus extend scientific knowledge into the early Middle Ages, long before the much-lauded achievements of the “Renaissance” and “Enlightenment”.
From here, we may start to recognise, and value, ways of perceiving and knowing that do not simply mirror or anticipate modern mental habits by splitting science and poetry apart but which fuse their powers together to create an impact in the world.
http://jmems.dukejournals.org/content/45/2/219.full.pdf+html
While it is difficult to strip Eilmer’s tale of its mythical associations, the probability of his feat does not buckle under scrutiny. It stands, therefore, at a crossroads. Are we dealing with a technological reality or an imaginative story?
This article uncovers and examines some of the most striking incidents of human flight in the literature, art and science leading up to Eilmer’s lifetime in order to gain a sounder understanding of the monk’s performance. In doing so, I wrest that performance away from conventional histories of science but also challenge earlier dismissals of the flight as mere legend.
PDF available here: http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/J.NML.5.103448
By killing and decapitating Hrothgar’s reader, Grendel’s mother highlights an anxiety within Beowulf about “things” that defy human interpretation and convey monstrous, marginal, or unknowable messages instead.
Although Beowulf acknowledges that a wide range of artifacts can be read, the text also reveals that certain enigmatic things exceed their role as readable objects. Liminal things like the giants’ sword carry alien stories and histories into the safety of the mead hall, disrupting a longstanding human reliance upon legibility and altering the way that literate communities interpret that which has come before them.
http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1041257313Z.00000000033
Teaching Documents by James Paz
Old English therefore tests your skill as a reader – and as a writer. Modern writers, from Tolkien and Auden to Heaney and Boland, have refused to abandon this vanished literary world. Instead, they have drawn on it as a source of creativity, inspiration and play. In lectures, we will study Old English alongside these Modern English translations and poetic responses. But students on this course will get the chance to go further still. In workshops, you will turn your critical insights into creative energy, making new translations of your own and shaping living songs from fading parchment.
Public Engagement by James Paz
We may like to believe that we are seeing and hearing the voices of Anglo-Saxon men and women through these things, but why did humans so often feel the need to talk with the things around them – lending voice to, and receiving voice from, a sword, a shield, a tree, a bone, a cross? Their words are not whispered or shouted to us across the centuries but cut or carved or scratched or inked. These early medieval voices are embodied but the ‘bodies’ that bear them are not fleshy human ones; they are calfskin, whalebone, sculpted stone, twisted gold.
This book examines the surprising agency and talkativeness displayed by nonhumans in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture. Drawing on thing theory, it argues that ‘things’ do not simply carry human voices across time but change them, reshaping or even subverting the messages intended by their original patrons, makers or possessors.
Fourteen groundbreaking new essays, intended for medievalist and science fiction audiences alike, consider where, how and why ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ interact in medieval literature; they explore the ways in which works of modern science fiction illuminate medieval counterparts; but they also identify both the presence and absence of the medieval past in SF history and criticism. Contributors include medievalists and early modernists, science fiction critics and authors, historians of science and research astronomers, with each essay providing a unique perspective on the intersections between science, fiction and the medieval.
From the science and fictions of Beowulf to the medieval and post-medieval appearances of the Green Children of Woolpit; from time travel in the legend of the Seven Sleepers to the medievalism of Star Trek; from manmade marvels in medieval manuscripts to the blurring of medieval magic and futuristic technology in tales of the dying earth; from courtly love on Mars in the novels of E.R. Burroughs to a medieval aesthetic of science fiction called ‘catapunk’: these essays repeatedly rethink the simplistic divides that have been set up between modern and pre-modern texts. The variety of studies collected here uncover striking resonances across time and space while also revealing how the two most popular genres of today – science fiction and fantasy – have been constructed around conceptions, and misconceptions, about the Middle Ages.
Medieval Science Fiction will appeal to anyone interested in medieval literature, medieval science and technology, medievalism, genre fiction and science fiction studies.
http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=15157
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526133731/
https://boydellandbrewer.com/slow-scholarship-hb.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvktrxwz
READ THIS OPEN-ACCESS ARTICLE HERE: https://ims.leeds.ac.uk/article/the-animality-of-work-and-craft-in-early-medieval-english-literature/
My reassessment of the Old English texts under discussion will help to break down the barriers that terms like “superstition” have put up and thus extend scientific knowledge into the early Middle Ages, long before the much-lauded achievements of the “Renaissance” and “Enlightenment”.
From here, we may start to recognise, and value, ways of perceiving and knowing that do not simply mirror or anticipate modern mental habits by splitting science and poetry apart but which fuse their powers together to create an impact in the world.
http://jmems.dukejournals.org/content/45/2/219.full.pdf+html
While it is difficult to strip Eilmer’s tale of its mythical associations, the probability of his feat does not buckle under scrutiny. It stands, therefore, at a crossroads. Are we dealing with a technological reality or an imaginative story?
This article uncovers and examines some of the most striking incidents of human flight in the literature, art and science leading up to Eilmer’s lifetime in order to gain a sounder understanding of the monk’s performance. In doing so, I wrest that performance away from conventional histories of science but also challenge earlier dismissals of the flight as mere legend.
PDF available here: http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/J.NML.5.103448
By killing and decapitating Hrothgar’s reader, Grendel’s mother highlights an anxiety within Beowulf about “things” that defy human interpretation and convey monstrous, marginal, or unknowable messages instead.
Although Beowulf acknowledges that a wide range of artifacts can be read, the text also reveals that certain enigmatic things exceed their role as readable objects. Liminal things like the giants’ sword carry alien stories and histories into the safety of the mead hall, disrupting a longstanding human reliance upon legibility and altering the way that literate communities interpret that which has come before them.
http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1041257313Z.00000000033
Old English therefore tests your skill as a reader – and as a writer. Modern writers, from Tolkien and Auden to Heaney and Boland, have refused to abandon this vanished literary world. Instead, they have drawn on it as a source of creativity, inspiration and play. In lectures, we will study Old English alongside these Modern English translations and poetic responses. But students on this course will get the chance to go further still. In workshops, you will turn your critical insights into creative energy, making new translations of your own and shaping living songs from fading parchment.