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Biography

I am a literary scholar specializing in the Middle Ages. I teach many different medieval texts and traditions, including Chaucer, Dante, Beowulf, Arthurian romances, drama, the love lyric, and the Ovidian tradition. I also teach Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, the Gothic revival, autobiography and memoir, and the history of the English language.

I am especially interested in how reading can change the way people understand themselves. This was the focus of my first book, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. More recently, I explored the subject in an essay on 20th-century fantasy writing. I am currently writing a book about Chaucer.