Ph.D. Yale University, 1998

M.A. Duke University, 1994

A.B. Cornell University, 1991

 

I teach and research English literature of the Middle Ages. My current major research project is a new critical edition of the works of Peter Idley, who was an English bureaucrat-poet from the mid-fifteenth century. My other long-term project is a book on popular constitutionalism, mirrors for princes, and the poetics of governmentality in English literature from the Second Barons' War to the early Tudor period, c. 1246-1541.

 

My publications include books and articles on parliament and constitutionalism in medieval literature and culture; the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Gower; the historiography of English philology; and other topics involving medieval literature, history, politics, and criticism. I am the co-editor of Middle English for the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, one of the oldest scholarly journals in Medieval Studies. 

 

At the undergraduate level I teach Chaucer and late medieval literature, as well as Arthurian literature, Old English language and literature, History of the English Language, and literary critical theory. I have directed several exceptional undergraduate students in Independent Studies on different topics. At the graduate level I teach all of these subjects as well as the professional literature pedagogy seminar. I actively participate on graduate committees at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels (as director or member) covering medieval and early modern literature.