About me

I am a Professor of English, specializing in medieval literature, at the College of Charleston, where I’m also Chair of the English department. I co-founded and edited the award-winning journal postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studiesfor 11 years, and I co-founded the BABEL Working Group. My book, Objects of Affection: The Book and the Household in Late Medieval England, was published in 2021 by Manchester University Press.

At the College of Charleston, I teach courses in medieval literature and culture, the history of the English language, the introduction to the early British literature, and composition. Recent Special Topics courses include Medieval Feminism and King Arthur & the Arthurverse.

Recent publications:

“Renovating the Household Through Affective Invention in Manuscripts Ashmole 61 and Advocates 19.3.1” in Household Knowledges in Late Medieval England and France, eds. Glenn D. Burger and Rory G. Critten (Manchester University Press, 2019).

A fantastic online resource for students of Chaucer, the Open-Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales (2017)whose editorial collective of five scholars includes me.

A chapter on “Feminism and Women’s Experience in the Manciple’s Tale” for the Open-Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales.

A book I co-edited with Eileen Joy, Fragments for a History of a Vanishing Humanism, part of the Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture series of Ohio State University Press (2016).

A special journal issue I co-edited with Allan Mitchell and Julie Orlemanski on “Critical/Liberal/Arts” appeared in December 2015: postmedieval 6.4.

A collection I co-edited for punctum books, called Dark Chaucer. (This, like all punctum books publications, is available for free as an electronic download, and you may also purchase a print-on-demand copy for just $15.)

In Dark Chaucer, I have an essay on Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and Sir Orfeo called “Disconsolate Art.”

I co-edited Burn After Reading (Vol. 1: Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies) with punctum books, published in May 2014.

I published a journal article based on my experiences teaching the senior seminar “Medieval Prime Time” appeared, called “Medieval Prime Time: Entertaining the Family in Fifteenth-Century England—and Educating Students in Twenty-First-Century America.” It is part of a special issue of the journal Pedagogy on “Teaching Off the Grid” (that is, using non-canonical texts in the medieval English literature classroom).

I wrote the chapter on “Late-Medieval Conduct Literature” in the History of British Women’s Writing, 700-1500 (ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt).

I regularly organize conference sessions, symposia, and conferences, and give talks to a range of audiences:

I am working on a talk for the New Chaucer Society meeting in Durham, UK, in July 2022 (postponed from 2020) on “Agency without Subjects? Prospects for a Medieval-Feminist Future.”

For the International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May 2020, I co-organized for the BABEL Working Group and with the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship a workshop on “Listening Harder: A Workshop on Race and Racism.”

I led a workshop on “Collaborative Pedagogy in Medieval Studies: A Scaffolded Workshop Series II: Outcomes: What Do We Want Our Students to Gain from Our Teaching?” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo in May 2019

For the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2019, I co-organized with Allan Mitchell a panel sub-theme on “Calculating the Past.” I was also an Invited Respondent to “Rethinking the Present with the Past.”

For the New Chaucer Society meeting in Toronto in July 2018, I presented a talk called “Not Aloof but OOF: Feminist Object Studies.”

At the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2018, I gave a paper on “Forgiving Inferiors: Sir Orfeo, The Carpenter’s Tools, The Knight Who Forgave his Father’s Slayer.”

At the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2018 I was the invited commenter on the panel “Intersecting Identities I.”

For the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2017, I chaired the postmedieval roundtable on “Atmospheric Medievalisms/ Medieval Atmospheres”

In July 2016 at the New Chaucer Society in London, I gave a talk on “Knowing Things.”

I presented a paper on “Everyday Ecologies” at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2016.

I organized with Asa Simon Mittman a session for the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2016 on “A Better Recipe for Peer Review.”

I organized another session, with Molly Lewis, on “Posthuman Natures” for the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2016.

At the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2016 I was the invited commenter on the session “Natural Elements.”

In January 2016 I presented a paper on “In Pursuit of a Postsecular Posthumanities” at the Modern Languages Association conference in Austin, TX.

In Fall 2015 I presented a response to the “Sweaty Scholar” session at the 4th Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group at the University of Toronto; the conference them is “Off the Books,” and I am co-organizing the conference.

In May 2015 I gave a talk at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan celebrating the 25th anniversary of Carolyn Dinshaw’s Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics.

October 2014 held the BABEL Working Group’s third biennial conference in Santa Barbara, California. I co-organized this conference, whose theme is “On the Beach: Precariousness, Risk, Forms of Life, Affinity, and Play at the Edge of the World.”

In July 2014 at the meeting of the New Chaucer Society in Reykjavik, Iceland, I presented a paper called “The Book Abides.”