EDUCATION:
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2009
B.A., Washington University, 2002
INTERESTS: Middle English literature, especially alliterative poetry and prose; medieval Latin rhetoric, especially the art of letter-writing; medieval pedagogical practice and commentary traditions; sociology of culture; literary theory.
My current research examines relations between vernacular literature, Latinate educational practice, and bureaucratic uses of literacy. I approach this problematic from two directions. First, focusing on the episode of English alliterative writing ca. 1350-1450, I have been asking how factors such as education, occupational practice, and class position shaped the ways that English poets related to the literary resources of their native language. Secondly, focusing on the education and professional activity of secretaries and bureaucratic clerks in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, I have been attempting to show that the rhythmical cadences taught by the Latin art of letter writing or ars dictaminis functioned as a nodal element in the constellation of this occupational class's literary values and linguistic dispositions. My current book project, “Cultural Promotion: Middle English Alliterative Writing and the Ars Dictaminis,” unites these two lines of research: I argue that training in and practice of the ars dictaminis predisposed people to hear, in the traditional English alliterative verse and prose, rhythmical effects stylistically equivalent to the prized rhythmical cadences of Latin dictamen. This perceived affiliation between Latin and English rhythmical forms may have contributed to the expansion in production of English alliterative writing during the period 1350-1450. More generally, I am interested in using concepts derived from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture in order to develop our understanding of medieval literate practice, and in making case studies of medieval literate practice in order to strengthen and develop Bourdieu's theoretical sociology.
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES: Major English Poets, Language and Symbolic Power in Late Medieval England, Habits (composition seminar)
