Nat Rivkin
Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
My research interests include late medieval and early modern verse, trans studies, and classical reception history. I am currently working on a book project that examines four specific figures inherited from antiquity: the monstrous birth, the virgin, the hermaphrodite, and the angel. I show how these figures challenge the fantasy of premodern England as a place where knights were knights, ladies were ladies, and everyone was white.
Representative publications
“‘Nevermore a manly shape retaine’: Francis Beaumont’s Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, Fairness, and Trans Femininity c. 1602.” College Literature, vol. 52, no. 4, Fall 2025, 496–517. doi.org/10.1353/lit.2025.a971771
“‘Manlike, but Different Sex’: Genealogies of Trans Femininity in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, vol. 35, no. 2, September 2023, 132–140. doi.org/10.1080/10412573.2023.2224153
“‘As a rond of flesche yschore’: The King of Tars, Race-Thinking, and Trans Childhood c. 1330.” In The Routledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies. 2025, 333–345. doi.org/10.4324/9781003010180
“‘Lely-wyte, clene with pure virginyté’: the N-Town Nativity, the Virgin Mary, and Trans Misogyny.” Early Theatre, vol. 27, no. 2, 2024, 23–36. doi.org/10.12745/et.27.2.5846
“Introduction: Medieval Trans Natures.” Co-authored with Aylin Malcolm. Medieval Ecocriticisms, vol. 4, October 2024, 1–15. doi.org/10.32773/USYL7779