Dr. Rosalie Gabay Bernheim

I am a medievalist specialising in gender, embodiment, and Jewish-Christian relations. My research focuses particularly on gender and religious identity in medieval French literature and in the adaptation and interpretation of biblical narratives, with wider interests in sexuality, reproductive bodies, motherhood, and the ways bodily experience shaped communal belonging.

I completed my PhD in Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews in 2025. My doctoral research examined menstruation, menopause, and fertility in medieval Jewish and Christian texts, exploring how bodily processes became sites for constructing religious identity and communal boundaries. Bringing Hebrew and Latin exegesis into conversation with Old French biblical and literary writing, the thesis traced how ideas about reproductive embodiment circulated across languages, genres, and religious traditions. I am currently completing my first monograph, which is based off of my doctoral work, Menstruation, Religious Identity, and Medieval Jewish–Christian Relations: Speaking through Blood, which is under contract with ARC Humanities Press.

My current postdoctoral project, Rape and Religious Difference: Sexual Violence in Medieval Jewish and Christian Discourses, extends this work to sexual harm, coercion, and their aftermath. Focusing on northern Europe between approximately 1000 and 1400, it investigates how Jewish and Christian legal, theological, and literary texts defined sexual violence, assessed evidence and testimony, and used ideas of consent, pregnancy, reputation, and communal vulnerability to negotiate religious identity and difference.

Publications

Menstruation, Religious Identity, and Medieval Jewish-Christian Relations: Speaking Through Blood. ARC Humanities Press, forthcoming.

“From Menstruation to Maternity: Reinterpreting Rachel in Two Old French Biblical Poems.” French Studies Bulletin 46.3, 2025.

“Examples of Medieval Judith Midrashim: The Reception of the Pre-Modern Niddah.” In Experiencing the Hebrew Bible: Spotlights on History and Tradition, edited by Amy Fedeski, Kerstin Mayerhofer, and Alina L. Schittenhelm. March 2025. Open access.

“Cultural Taboos and Stigma.” Co-authored with Bettina Bildhauer. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Menstruation and Society, edited by Bee Hughes and Kay Standing. SAGE Publications, 2026.