Elisabeth Herbst Buzay is a specialist of French medieval literature and contemporary French literature, particularly fantasy works. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on multimodal communication across time, genre, and forms of media, with an emphasis on medievalism, the intersection of text and image, visual media, and digital humanities. She also works on topics relating autobiography to authorship and how the personal and critical can be intertwined, especially in women’s writing. Herbst Buzay has published and presented on subjects including medieval and contemporary literature, medievalism, digital storytelling, videogames, and music.

Herbst Buzay’s teaching similarly focuses on communication and interdisciplinarity, with the goal of helping students communicate successfully, find connections to different cultures, topics, and time periods, and develop intercultural competence. She has taught literature, culture, media, film, and writing courses, as well as language and survey courses. In all her classes, she prioritizes teaching students to communicate clearly and effectively and to hone their critical analysis skills by making connections between their own experiences and other cultures.

curriculum vitae

Recent publications:

• “Feminist Knights, Questions of Power, and Utopian Societies: Medievalism Today in Cyril Pedrosa and Roxanne Moreil’s L’âge d’or.” The Year’s Work in Medievalism. Issue 35-36 (2020-2021 [published in 2023]): 112-124. 
• “A New Normality: The Evolution of the Uchronic Universe of the Series Le château des étoiles by Alex Alice.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies/SITES: A New Normal. Vol. 26.2 (March 2022): 143-150.
• “The Voiceless Find their Voice: Resistance and Opposition in the Fantasy of Johan Heliot and Pierre Pevel.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies/SITES, Open Issue: “Sous les Pavés” Dossier (December 2019): 584-591.
• “Fantasy Worlds as Spaces of Significance: Meaning Making in Magical Universes.” Revue de Philologie et de Communication interculturelle. (Im)possible Worlds. Vol. II, No. 1. (Jan. 2018): 79-86.
• With Emmanuel Buzay, “Neomedievalism and the Epic in Assassin’s Creed: The Hero’s Quest.” The Middle Ages in Popular Culture. Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2015. 113-132.

Selected presentations:

• “Laurent Voulzy and Francis Cabrel as Modern Troubadours? An Exploration of Two French Singer-Songwriters’ Forays into Medievalist Music.” Session: Music Medievalism in Popular Culture. 59th International Conference on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI (Hybrid format). 10 May 2024.
• “A Declaration of Independence through Reading and Writing: Laure Murat’s Proust, roman familial (2023).” Panel A4: Francophone Women Voices. 2024 20th & 21st Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium. 22 February 2024. (session chair and presenter)
• Roundtable Participant. “Marie de France in Popular Culture II: Marie and Lauren Groff’s Matrix (A Roundtable)” 58th International Conference on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI (Hybrid format). 13 May 2023.
• “Who am I? What do I do?: (Alt)Academic Digital Storytelling and Autoethnography.” DARIAH ANNUAL EVENT 2022: STORYTELLING. 1 June 2022. Athens, Greece (Hybrid Event).
• “A Plague Tale: Innocence: The Function of Media in a Fantasy Medievalist Video Game.” The International Colloquium in 20th- and 21st-Centuries French and Francophone Studies: Mediums. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. 24 March 2022.