My article on gender and ecomaterialism in the Roman de Silence was recently published online by ISLE. This article will eventually be part of a cluster on “Queer and Trans Climate Futures,” edited by Davy Knittle and Austin Lillywhite. It’s open-access thanks to an agreement with my university.

Here’s my original abstract:

The thirteenth-century Roman de Silence depicts climate and gender as materially entangled, linking the titular character’s (trans)masculinity to wind and heat. I argue that this poem envisions nonhuman nature as enabling resistance to gender binaries while bolstering racial and class hierarchies. I trace the effects of climate on the protagonist Silence’s skin tone, showing how epidermal whiteness underlies their fluid gender and indelible aristocratic identity. I then consider how Silence’s interactions with Merlin represent gender and species as unstable and intertwined. Finally, I interpret Merlin’s description of a grafted plant as an emblem of interspecies collaboration and trans thriving.