Dr Basil Arnould Price
@basilaprice.bsky.social
He/Him 🏳️⚧️ ✨ Asst. Prof. of Queer and Medieval Literature @SUNY, previously UCLA, York, UO ✨Gender, Empire, and Race in the Old Norse World ✨my own bad opinions
The peas are not helping me write
November 22, 2025 at 9:34 PM
The peas are not helping me write
I’m speaking with some amazing colleagues next week about fire and its dualities in the medieval world - I’ll be talking about eco-apocalypse, how to litigate a hyperobject, and the Sturlungaöld as a never-ending fire-season. Please join us !
November 11, 2025 at 4:51 PM
I’m speaking with some amazing colleagues next week about fire and its dualities in the medieval world - I’ll be talking about eco-apocalypse, how to litigate a hyperobject, and the Sturlungaöld as a never-ending fire-season. Please join us !
Harm reduction in action.
November 7, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Harm reduction in action.
i don't know why, but paul gilroy's 'postcolonial melancholia' looks to me like the VHS cover for some lost late-90s movie
November 4, 2025 at 8:50 PM
i don't know why, but paul gilroy's 'postcolonial melancholia' looks to me like the VHS cover for some lost late-90s movie
Alright Old Norse folks, how are we translating 'skráveifa' as in Jón skráveifa Guttormsson?
November 1, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Alright Old Norse folks, how are we translating 'skráveifa' as in Jón skráveifa Guttormsson?
I'm delighted to say that my article, "Sufficient Tragedy: Masculinity as Cruel Optimism in Beowulf," which I published in English Studies in 2024, is the currently featured Article of the Month on Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index website!
![Screenshot from Feminae, with text as follows:
"Article of the Month: Indexers select an article or essay at the beginning of each month that is outstanding in its line of argument, wealth of significances, and writing style. We particularly look for pieces that will be useful as course readings. [Picture of the reconstructed Sutton Hoo helmet]. Price, Basil Arnould. "Sufficient Tragedy: Masculinity as Cruel Optimism in Beowulf." English Studies 105, 5 (2024): 681-702. Available open access from the Taylor & Francis website: https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2024.2393068"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ohw24ue5afhhv6lrjmlxtrbo/bafkreiaxgwxeecjmkldneue74z4qfwaiuvboqn43q5mb3f4mcys4zjiwya@jpeg)
October 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
I'm delighted to say that my article, "Sufficient Tragedy: Masculinity as Cruel Optimism in Beowulf," which I published in English Studies in 2024, is the currently featured Article of the Month on Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index website!
It’s finally coming out ! Get ready Old Norse studies 😈🏳️⚧️
October 27, 2025 at 8:15 PM
It’s finally coming out ! Get ready Old Norse studies 😈🏳️⚧️
finally finished making a short and dirty guide to middle english, a language that i famously do not like. hopefully my students appreciate my tables!
October 21, 2025 at 12:20 AM
finally finished making a short and dirty guide to middle english, a language that i famously do not like. hopefully my students appreciate my tables!
Abstract for the morbidly curious.
![In “Beowulf on Gender,” (2012) Gillian Overing defines masculinity in the poem “as a fantasy of armored independence,” observing that “arms encapsulate the man, demarcate the parameters of the male body […] arms are the man” (10, 5). Despite productive examinations of the enmeshment of human and object in Old English texts (e.g. Paz 2017; Trilling 2019), these studies have yet to contend with how these imbrications produce gender. Since, as Overing suggests, manhood in Beowulf is signified and realized through objects repeatedly identified as created (see Cavell 2014), masculinity is neither natural nor inherent but produced through the body’s entanglement with man-made materials. If, as Susan Stryker (1994) asserts, “the transsexual body is an unnatural body,” are these assemblages not just masculine, but trans masculine?
Drawing upon Jeanne Vaccaro (2010, 2014, 2015)’s theories of transgender craft, this paper reads masculinity in Beowulf as ‘handmade’, produced through mixed-media, collective labor, and “the ordinary feelings and textures of crafting transgender life”. Beginning with the arming of Beowulf (ll. 1442-1491), I read this episode as constructing armaments as androgenizing agents, but also as unsettling the body’s supposed fixity or legibility. From there, I examine how failed or lost objects in the poem challenge teleological models of transition, which often determine the foci of the medieval trans turn. By reading Beowulf as “an overwhelmingly [trans]masculine poem”, (see Overing 1995), this reading not only identifies how “material experiences and accumulative felt matter,” make and unmake manhood, but also illustrates what Old English studies offers to ongoing debates within trans studies about the relation between body and feeling.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ohw24ue5afhhv6lrjmlxtrbo/bafkreiaervtphbd5p2ehkzxwmivsdnaehpt5otkjsaybidqnyb2aabta6i@jpeg)
October 16, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Abstract for the morbidly curious.
Hey y’all! I’ll see you at Kalamazoo where I’m presenting a paper called “Beowulf’s Trans Body” for a session on Old English Trans Studies, organised by the lovely Caz Batten and Jon Davis-Secord 🏳️⚧️🗡️
October 16, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Hey y’all! I’ll see you at Kalamazoo where I’m presenting a paper called “Beowulf’s Trans Body” for a session on Old English Trans Studies, organised by the lovely Caz Batten and Jon Davis-Secord 🏳️⚧️🗡️
Proof day! Excited to see this piece in Exemplaria. ❤️
October 13, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Proof day! Excited to see this piece in Exemplaria. ❤️
what the hell is this
October 2, 2025 at 7:16 PM
what the hell is this
transgender for everybody, especially me.
September 29, 2025 at 6:47 PM
transgender for everybody, especially me.
Finally website official with SUNY Oneonta ! suny.oneonta.edu/english/facu...
September 19, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Finally website official with SUNY Oneonta ! suny.oneonta.edu/english/facu...
all i was trying to do was find a map of the viking disapora to accompany my slides, and i am plagued by ai-generated white women who want to tell me about the viking age
September 2, 2025 at 12:23 AM
all i was trying to do was find a map of the viking disapora to accompany my slides, and i am plagued by ai-generated white women who want to tell me about the viking age
why do the pdfs generated by proquest look like that
August 31, 2025 at 3:45 PM
why do the pdfs generated by proquest look like that
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 15 SEPTEMBER!
Please consider submitting an abstract to Daniel Reeve and I's proposed session(s) "Beyond Touch: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" for @imc-leeds.bsky.social (6-9 July 2026). Full CFP below and accessibly HERE: tinyurl.com/BT-IMC.
Please consider submitting an abstract to Daniel Reeve and I's proposed session(s) "Beyond Touch: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" for @imc-leeds.bsky.social (6-9 July 2026). Full CFP below and accessibly HERE: tinyurl.com/BT-IMC.
August 30, 2025 at 5:38 PM
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 15 SEPTEMBER!
Please consider submitting an abstract to Daniel Reeve and I's proposed session(s) "Beyond Touch: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" for @imc-leeds.bsky.social (6-9 July 2026). Full CFP below and accessibly HERE: tinyurl.com/BT-IMC.
Please consider submitting an abstract to Daniel Reeve and I's proposed session(s) "Beyond Touch: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" for @imc-leeds.bsky.social (6-9 July 2026). Full CFP below and accessibly HERE: tinyurl.com/BT-IMC.
Ready for @imc-leeds.bsky.social 2026? Submit an abstract to Dan Reeve and I's CFP: "BEYOND TOUCH: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" We invite submissions for 15-20 minute papers that examine queer and trans temporalities from new and unexpected angles. #IMC2026. Full CFP below 👇
July 29, 2025 at 3:18 AM
Ready for @imc-leeds.bsky.social 2026? Submit an abstract to Dan Reeve and I's CFP: "BEYOND TOUCH: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" We invite submissions for 15-20 minute papers that examine queer and trans temporalities from new and unexpected angles. #IMC2026. Full CFP below 👇
With some surprise, I am delighted to announce that I am taking a Tenure-Track job as Assistant Professor of Queer and Medieval Literature at SUNY Oneonta.
Advice for incoming assistant professors is warmly welcomed! 🩷
Advice for incoming assistant professors is warmly welcomed! 🩷
July 26, 2025 at 3:24 PM
With some surprise, I am delighted to announce that I am taking a Tenure-Track job as Assistant Professor of Queer and Medieval Literature at SUNY Oneonta.
Advice for incoming assistant professors is warmly welcomed! 🩷
Advice for incoming assistant professors is warmly welcomed! 🩷
jstor i do not want this
July 12, 2025 at 5:47 PM
jstor i do not want this
Cannot believe it’s the last day of @imc-leeds.bsky.social! 🩷 Already missing everyone and ready for next year! #IMC25
July 10, 2025 at 8:10 AM
Cannot believe it’s the last day of @imc-leeds.bsky.social! 🩷 Already missing everyone and ready for next year! #IMC25
Ready for #IMC2025 next week? Don't miss session #241 on (14:15-15:45) and session #341 (16:30-18:00) on Monday about all things Seven Sages of Rome, org. by @7sagesresearch.bsky.social! Come hear me in #241 talk about translation, transness, and badness in the Danish redaction! 🏳️⚧️
June 30, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Ready for #IMC2025 next week? Don't miss session #241 on (14:15-15:45) and session #341 (16:30-18:00) on Monday about all things Seven Sages of Rome, org. by @7sagesresearch.bsky.social! Come hear me in #241 talk about translation, transness, and badness in the Danish redaction! 🏳️⚧️
Out in #OA today, the new volume Reconsidering Consent and Coercion, ed by the brilliant Hannah Piercy and @janebonsall.bsky.social, with an article by me on the strange pairing of Svarfdæla saga and feminism.
June 24, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Out in #OA today, the new volume Reconsidering Consent and Coercion, ed by the brilliant Hannah Piercy and @janebonsall.bsky.social, with an article by me on the strange pairing of Svarfdæla saga and feminism.
Look what arrived from @yorkmedieval.bsky.social today ! I am so honored by this award and grateful for the continued support of the wonderful community at the CMS.
June 5, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Look what arrived from @yorkmedieval.bsky.social today ! I am so honored by this award and grateful for the continued support of the wonderful community at the CMS.
Tomorrow, I’m off to UC Santa Barbara to talk about Old Norse studies and its relationship with the Indigenous and trans turns in medieval studies - hope to see some folks there ! 🏳️⚧️
May 21, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Tomorrow, I’m off to UC Santa Barbara to talk about Old Norse studies and its relationship with the Indigenous and trans turns in medieval studies - hope to see some folks there ! 🏳️⚧️