Melissa Raine is an Honorary Associate Investigator (AI 2015, 2016). She received her PhD from The University of Melbourne in 2003. Her thesis was concerned with writing on food in a range of fifteenth-century Middle English texts selected to represent the diverse and overlapping domains of social standing, concern with health, religious observation, and physical pleasure, all of which were significant in shaping medieval thought about the significance of eating. This study focused on embodied concepts of self and the challenges of relating 'lived experience' from the past to texts from the same period, bringing scholarship from the fields of literacy, book production, culinary and medical history and textual critique into dialogue with research on the sociology of the body. Her interest in the relationship between corporeality, textuality and theories of self, as well as her interdisciplinary approach, continue into her current project, 'Affect and The Child’s Voice in Middle English Narrative'.
Contact
melissa.raine@unimelb.edu.au
Academia
Research
Affect and the Child’s Voice in Middle English Narrative
Children’s Voices and Their Stories in Contemporary Australia
Publications
Hickey, H., A. McKendry and M. Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer Across the Centuries. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
Raine, M. 'Searching for Emotional Communities in Late Medieval England'. In Emotions and Social Change: Historical and Sociological Perspectives, edited by D. Lemmings and A. Brooks, pp. 65–81. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Raine, M. '"Full knyghtly he ete his mete”: Consumption and Social Prowess in Malory's Tale of Gareth'. Viator 43.1 (2012): 323–38.
Raine, M.'“Fals flesch”: Food and the Embodied Piety of Margery Kempe’. New Medieval Literatures 7 (2005): 101–26.
Blog Posts
'Hearing and Understanding Children's Voices in Contemporary Australia' - The inaugural post of We are listening! A blog about the voices of children and young people, 13 November 2017
'Reflecting on Children’s Voices: Creating Space to Listen' - CHE blog, 16 September 2016
'Why being trauma informed matters beyond trauma' - Prosody: The Australian Childhood Foundation Blog for Professionals, 30 June 2016
'Big Emotions in the Classroom' - CHE blog, 1 June 2016
'Youth Voices in Contemporary Australia' - CHE blog, 8 April 2016
'From Middle English to Modern Australia: My Research Journey' - We the Humanities blog, 18 March 2016
'Jack Goody and the History of Emotions' - CHE blog, 4 September 2015
'The First Happy Child in English Literature?' - CHE blog, 26 August 2015
'Reading Faces: Bodies, Senses, Lives' - CHE blog, 29 June 2015
Awards
2006 (June): Article of the Month, awarded by Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index for “’Fals flesch’”.
Recent presentations
‘Childhood and Emotions: Seeking Constructive Conversations’, Third International Conference of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions ‘The Future of Emotions/Conversations Without Borders’, The University of Western Australia, 14–15 June 2018.
‘Emotion and the Voices of Literary Children’, ‘Emotional Discourses in Children’s Literature’ symposium, UWA, 3‒4 April 2018.
‘Game on? Knowing and Feeling in Jack and His Stepdame’, ‘Emotion and Cognition in Medieval Literature’ panel, 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA, 10–13 May 2017.
'The Critical Self and Medieval Texts', 2016 Methods Collaboratory: 'Moving Minds: Converting Cognition and Emotion in History', Macquarie University.
'Authority and the Child’s Voice in Jack and his Stepdame', ANZAMEMS (Brisbane), 2015
'Grief, Consolation and the Senses in Pearl', International Conference on Narrative (Chicago), 2015
'The Child’s Voice in Middle English Literature: Pearl', 2014
'Affect: the Driver of Critical Practice?', 'Literature and Affect' (Annual conference of the Australasian Association of Literature), 2014
'Personal Taste and Social Threat in Malory’s Morte Darthur', International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, 2013
