Aylin Malcolm

Aylin Malcolm came to the University of Guelph in 2023 after completing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. Their current research explores later medieval writing on animals and plants, particularly how philosophers thought about gender and sexuality across different orders of nature. More broadly, they are interested in what literature can contribute to the history of natural science, from the twelfth century to the present moment of ecological crisis. Prof. Malcolm's teaching includes courses on medieval literature, material culture, and the environmental humanities. They have coedited special issues on gender variance and human/nonhuman relationships in the Middle Ages (Medieval Ecocriticisms, 2024) and on the uses of digital tools for premodern studies (Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2026). Their other interests include premodern astronomy, recipes, and the history of the book from medieval manuscripts to the handpress period.

• Environmental Humanities
• Medieval Literature
• Animal Studies
• Literature and Science
• History of the Book
• Queer and Trans Theory
• Digital Editing and Archives

PhD (English), University of Pennsylvania

MA (English), The Ohio State University

BA and Sc (Environment), McGill University

Scholarship

• “Print Conventions and Authority in Three English Recipe Manuscripts” (with Margaret C. Maurer), Renaissance Studies (2026).
• “Not Reading the Edition” (with Whitney Trettien and Cassidy Holahan), Futures of Digital Scholarly Editing (2025).
• “Out of the Woods: The Nature of Gender in Le Roman de Silence,” ISLE (2025).
• “Animals,” The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer (2024).
• “Birds, Blood, and Nonbinary Bodies in Marie de France’s Yonec,” Medieval Ecocriticisms (2024).
• “Trans Studies,” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing (2024).
• “What the Mole Knows: Experience, Exempla, and Interspecies Dialogue in Albert the Great’s De animalibus," New Medieval Literatures (2022).
• “Of Monks and Movable Beasts: Animals as Fellow Travelers in the Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis,” Viator (2021).
• “In the Orbit of the Sphere: Sacrobosco’s De sphaera mundi in UPenn MS Codex 1881,” Manuscript Studies (2020).

Public Writing

• “Bird Sex Fascinated Medieval Thinkers as Much as People Today” (with Clare Davidson), The Conversation (2026).
• “Smoke and Mirrors: Medieval Drama Through the Smog,” Network in Canadian History & Environment (2025).
• “Long in the Tusk: Narwhals, Then and Now,” Environmental History Now (2021).

• Chaucer the Scientist
• Contemporary Literature and Ecological Justice
• The Medieval World
• Studies in the History of Literary Production