I am a specialist in Old and Middle English, and am currently working on a monograph about the medieval roots of celebrity. My research and teaching interests include the histories of rhetoric and education; language pedagogy; short forms in literature; women, authorship, and power in the Middle Ages; contemporary medievalism; performance studies; food history; the literature of migration. I studied at the University of Toronto, Columbia, and Yale, where I received the English department’s James A. Veech Prize for best dissertation. I was an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University, an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, and am now Professor and head of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn. I’ve held visiting professorships at the University of Toronto and at the Sorbonne.

Monograph

The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature / Cambridge UP

Edited Journal Issues

Everyday Arts: Craft, Voice, Performance. With Emma O’Loughlin Bérat / Medieval Feminist Forum
In Brief. With Bruce Holsinger / New Literary History

Edited Books

Geschlecht macht Herrschaft – Interdisziplinäre Studien zu vormoderner Macht und Herrschaft. With Andrea Stieldorf, Linda Dohmen, and Ludwig D. Morenz / Bonn UP
Relations of Power: Women’s Networks in the Middle Ages. With Emma O. Bérat and Rebecca Hardie / Bonn UP
The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History. With Eric Weiskott / Medieval institute Publications
Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi / Punctum Books

Journal Articles 

“Voicing Emotion at School: Quintilian, Donatus, and Nicholas Udall” / Studies in Philology
“The Martyred Tongue: The Legendaries of Prudentius and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha” / postmedieval
“Beautiful Suffering and the Culpable Narrator in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women” / The Chaucer Review
“The Borrower’s Sin in the Middle English ‘Judas’” / Anglia
“Bede’s Liberation Philology: Releasing the English Tongue” / PMLA
“Violence, Performance and Pedagogy in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies” / Exemplaria 23.1
“The Grammar of Pain in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies” / Forum for Modern Language Studies

Essays in Collections 

“Ambivalent Moves: Mary of Egypt, Mary Magdalene, Margery Kempe” / L’œuvre en mouvement de l’Antiquité au xviiie siècle
“Charismatic Heroines in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women” / Heroinnen und Heldinnen in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur
“Writing Instruction from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century” With Carol Dana Lanham / A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to Contemporary America
“Beowulf and Andreas: intimate relations” / Dating Beowulf: Studies in Intimacy
“Spoiled and Eaten: Figures of Absorption in Medieval English Poetry” / The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History
“Peter Abaelards neues Charisma und die Erinnerung an die Asketen der Antike” / Erinnerung. Studien zu Konstruktionen Persistenzen und gesellschaftlichem Wandel
“Englischsprachige fiktionale Texte muslimischer Autorinnen. Möglichkeiten der Repräsentation” / Migration. Gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben im Wandel
“Literary Multilingualism in Everyday Life: The Case of Early Modern Vulgaria” / Das literarische Leben der Mehrsprachigkeit. Methodische Erkundungen
“Introduction” / Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi
“Poems in Prison: The Survival Strategies of Romanian Political Prisoners” / Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi
“Pas de Philologie: On Playful Appropriation and the Anglo-Saxon Scholar” / Des nains ou des géants. Emprunter et créer au Moyen Âge
“Verbal dueling” / Dragons in the Sky: English-Speaking Communities at the Close of the Millennia

Shorter Pieces

“The Legend of Good Women” / The Chaucer Encyclopedia
“Slow Teaching with Gawain” / New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession
“The Demon of Distraction” With Caleb Smith / Critical Inquiry
“Epigram” / New Literary History
“Afterword” With Mary Kate Hurley / Remembering the Present: Generative Uses of England’s Pre-Conquest Past
“Ælfric Bata” / Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain
“Solomon and Saturn” / Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain
“The Practice of Dissent” / postmedieval FORUM

Reviews

Andrew James Johnston, Beowulf Global: Konstruktionen historisch-kultureller Verflechtungen im altenglischen Epos / Journal of English and Germanic Philology
David K. Coley, Death and the Pearl Maiden: Plague, Poetry, England / The Medieval Review
Jennifer A. Jordan, Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods / Cultural History
Sarah Lynch, Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome /The Medieval Review
Aaron Hostetter, Political Appetites: Food in Medieval English Romance / Arthuriana
Allen J. Frantzen, Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England / Cultural History
Nicholas Orme, ed., English School Exercises, 1420-1530 / Journal of Medieval Latin
László Sándor Chardonnens and Bryan Carella, eds. Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular / Anglia
Cindy Ott, Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon / Cultural History