ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Southern Maine, Fall 2026–Present
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Whitman College, Fall 2023–Summer 2026
Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature and Culture, Department of English (Cross-Appointed, Gender and Women’s Studies Program), Birmingham-Southern College, 2018–2023.
Fellow and Instructor, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Department of English, Duke University, 2017–2018
EDUCATION
Ph.D., English Literature, Duke University, 2017
Dissertation: In Search of Pity: Chaucerian Poetics and the Suffering of Others
B.A., English, Latin, Sewanee: The University of the South, 2010
Minor: Women’s and Gender Studies, Phi Beta Kappa
PUBLICATIONS
Monograph
Forms of Suffering: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Chaucerian Pity, Cornell University Press, Fall 2026.
Articles and Book Chapters
“Something Rotten: Retting, Slow Violence, and Imprudent Ecology in Henryson’s Preaching of the Swallow,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 49, forthcoming 2027.
“Skeletons in Armor: Native Ghosts, Vanished Norsemen, and The Vampire Diaries' Fantasy of Whiteness,” Demystifying Mystic Falls: Essays on Race in The Vampire Diaries Universe, ed. Deanna Koretsky, McFarland, forthcoming 2026.
“Medieval Sex Ed: Hermeneutical Injustice and Forms of Resistance in and beyond the Medieval Classroom,” New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 6.2, Winter 2025.
“What Everyone Knows: Hermeneutical Injustice in the Medieval Iphis,” Believing Ancient Women: Feminist Epistemologies, eds. Megan Bowen, Mary Hamil Gilbert, and E. G. Nally, University of Edinburgh Press, Summer 2023.
“‘The pitous pite deserveth’: Justice, Violence, and Pity in the Prioress’s Tale and ‘The Jew and the Pagan’,” Exemplaria 34.2, July 2022.
“Conceiving Community: Familial Trinitarian Metaphors in Augustine, William Langland, and Julian of Norwich,” New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature: Essays in Honor of Denise N. Baker, eds. Amy N. Vines and Lee Templeton, Lehigh University Press, 2022.
“Forming Pity: Responses to Suffering in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Religion & Literature 53.3, Spring 2022.
“Passionate Language: Models of Compassion and the Language of Orthodoxy in Nicholas Love and Margery Kempe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 49.2 (May 2019): 265-94.
Public Humanities: Selected Essays and Short Pieces
“The Unspeakable Sin: Queer Book Bans in the Middle Ages,” The Conversation, May 2024.
Monthly Essayist for Ploughshares, selected essays include:
“A Brief History of Attention,” Ploughshares, May 2023.
“Breaking Down ‘Medieval’ Violence,” Ploughshares, August 2022.
“A Trick of the Light: Macbeth and Witchcraft,” Ploughshares, January 2022.
“Literary Silence in the Time of Pandemic,” Ploughshares, June 2020.
“Visualizing Suffering: Undergraduate Big Data and Humanities Research on Affect and Politics,” co-authored with Astrid Giugni. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Spring 2020 (24.2).
“Why Game of Thrones and Fantasy Literature Gets Medieval,” Duke Today, May 2019.
Book Reviews
Sara Petrosillo, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2023). Medieval Perspectives, Volume 36 (2023).
Jennifer Garrison, Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2017). Yearbook of Langland Studies, Volume 32 (2018): 442-45.
Articles in Progress
“From Bengal to London to Virginia: Christian Conversion and Education in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” co-written with Astrid Giugni, under consideration.
“Bats’ Eyes and Bloody Butchers: Need, Nature, and Dominion in Robert Henryson’s The Preaching of the Swallow,” under preparation for submission.
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
2022-Present Ethical Consumption Before Capitalism: sponsored by Bass Connections and Duke University’s Rhodes Information Initiative. Co-project lead: Astrid Giugni. Uses Natural Language Processing approaches based to track the changing language of consumer culture with the rise of global trade monopolies across the medieval and early modern periods. Featured in “Out of the Archives” (Folger Library 2022).
2017 Visualizing Suffering: Tracking Photojournalism and the Syrian Refugee Crisis: sponsored by Duke University’s Data+ program, co-project lead with Astrid Giugni. Examined the language & images of compassion, comparing to historical representations in medieval and early modern art, in major news outlets.
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
International & National
2023-2026 Bass Connections Grant, Duke University
2021 Associated Colleges of the South Teaching & Learning Workshop Fellow
2019-2020 Mayers Fellow, The Huntington Library
2018 Donald Howard Travel Scholarship, New Chaucer Society
2016, 2017 Conversions Grant, Early Modern Conversions Project, McGill University
Whitman College
2025, 2026 Summer Student-Faculty Research Grant
2024 Abshire/Hubbard Student-Research Grant
Birmingham-Southern College
2022, 2023 Summer Research Grant
2022 Queer Student Union Armstrong Award (student-nominated)
2020 Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Classroom
2020 Krulak Institute Research Grant
Duke University
2016–2017 John Lievsay Fellowship, Department of English, Duke University
2015–2016 Julian Price Dissertation Fellowship, Duke University
2015 Davidson Family Summer Research Fellowship, Duke University
2011–2012 Seed Grant, Franklin Humanities Institute Digital Scholarship Initiative
TEACHING
Whitman College
ENG 179: Introduction to Drama
ENG 200: Punks, Artists, and Revolutionaries: Queer Archives and Narratives
ENG 200: Witch Lit: Gender and Horror
ENG 233: Introduction to Shakespeare
ENG 230: Shakespeare: Love, Sex, and Gender
ENG 333: Chaucer
ENG 335: Brave New Worlds: Medieval and Early Modern Travel Narratives
ENG 335: Here be Dragons: The Sea in Medieval and Early Modern Literature
ENG 336: Medieval Sex Ed
ENG 336: Medieval Nature(s) and Environmental Crisis
ENG 370: Literature and Sexuality
ENG 370: Literature and the Body
Birmingham-Southern College
ENG 102: Seminar in Critical Writing and Thinking
GWS 200: Introduction to Gender and Women Studies
ENG 235: Queer Archives and Digital History: Punks, Artists, and Revolutionaries
ENG 240: Literature, Technology, and New Media (History of the Book & Introduction to Digital Humanities)
ENG/HON 247: An Arthurian Primer
ENG 248/HON 248: Game(s) of Thrones: Medieval Literature and Popular Culture
ENG 250: Survey of British Literature: From Beowulf to Zadie Smith
EH/GRS/UES 268: Environmental Thought in Antiquity
ENG 299: Medieval Sex Ed: Sex, Gender, and Power in Medieval Literature
ENG 350/HON 350: Chaucer
ENG 351: Medieval British Literature
Duke University
WRITING 101: The Lives of Sinners and Saints
ENG 90: Tainted Love: Desire and Ethics from Plato to Morrison
ENG 290/MEDREN 290: Game(s) of Thrones: Medieval Literature and Popular Culture
ENG 333/MEDREN 333: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
STUDENT SUPERVISION
B.A. Thesis (Whitman College)
Angela Froming, "The Literary Development of Morgan le Fay," English, 2026 (Directed)
Alexa Grechishkin, "Form in Flux: Character and Ethics in Woolf, Joyce, and Rushdie," English Honors, 2025 (Committee)
Dorothea Orth-Smith, "Desire and the Digital: The Feminine Object of Narrative Completion," English Honors, 2025 (Committee)
Avery Ehlers, "Staging John Patrick Shanley's Doubt," Theater Studies Thesis, 2024 (Committee)
B.A. Thesis Directed (Birmingham-Southern College)
Thornton Muncher, “Dramatizing Fencing,” Honors Project, 2021
Isabella Alday, “Fin’amor as critique of Chivalry,” Honors Project, 2021
Emily Kate Hayes, “Julian of Norwich: the Woman, the Mystic, and the Theologian,” Honors Project, 2021
Sarah Anna McCarthy, “Realism in the Depiction of PTSD in The Hunger Games,” Honors Project 2020
Kathryn Petty, “Gender Perception in High Fantasy Video Games,” Honors Project, 2019
Grace Gresham, “‘Filth over-strewn with flowers’: Christianity and Paganism in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess,” B.A. English, 2019
Kendal Harris, “Black Lives Don’t Matter: Dismantling Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give,” B.A. English, 2019
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
“Animal Exempla and the Hermeneutics of Need in John Bromyard's Summa Praedicantium,” New Chaucer Society Conference, Freiburg, Germany, Summer 2026.
“'Blastis Bitterlie' and 'Frawart Froistes': Robert Henryson's Winters and Aesopic Amplificatio,” Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, Spring 2025.
“Medieval Sex Ed: Combatting Hermeneutic Injustice in the Medieval Literature Classroom,” Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, Spring 2025.
“Love of Corn and Bloody Butchery: Robert Henryson and the Agricultural Politics of Water,” New Chaucer Society, Pasadena, CA, Summer 2024
“From Bengal to London to Virginia: Shaping and Circulating Education in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL, Spring 2024. Co-presenting with Astrid Giugni, Duke University
“Profiting from the Middle Ages: William Crashaw and Merchant Virtues, a Computational Approach,” Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, Spring 2023.
“Reading Pity After Chaucer,” New Chaucer Society, Durham, UK, Summer 2020 (postponed 2022).
“Bird Wisdom: Gender, Nature, and Labor in the Renaissance Robert Henryson,” Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland, Spring 2022.
“Ethical Consumption Before Capitalism,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, Spring 2022.
“Reading Pity After Chaucer,” New Chaucer Society, Durham, UK, Summer 2020 (postponed).
“Medieval Queer Literature and the Archive in General Education Courses,” Pedagogy and the Premodern: A Symposium, Durham, NC, Spring 2020.
“‘Al was conscience and tendre herte’: Pitee, Race, and the Child in the Prioress’s Tale,” South Eastern Medieval Association, Greensboro, NC, Fall 2019.
“Conceiving Community: Familial models of the Trinity in Langland and the Late Medieval Pastoral Tradition,” International Piers Plowman Society Conference, Miami, FL, Spring 2019.
“‘What need the bridge much broader than the flood?” A Collaborative Digital Pedagogy Experiment in Medieval and Renaissance texts to STEM students,” South Central Renaissance Conference, Lubbock, TX, Spring 2019. co-presented with Astrid Giugni, Duke University
“Knowing Suffering: Pity and the Gentle Heart in Late Medieval Literature,” New Chaucer Society Conference, Toronto, CA, Summer 2018.
“Identifying Suffering: Changing Models of Compassion and Identification in 15th-century England,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, Spring 2017.
INVITED TALKS
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Satirizing Chivalry,” The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Premodern Film Series, Spring 2020.
“Undergraduate Big Data and Humanities Research,” Franklin Humanities Institute and the Digital Humanities Initiative, Duke University, Durham, NC, Spring 2019.
“Dissecting Women: The Role of Gender in Early Anatomical Research,” The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, Spring 2019.
“Digital Pedagogy Roundtable,” Representing Migration Humanities Lab, Duke University, Durham, NC, Fall 2018.
“Chaucer and the Construction of English Identity: Printing Chaucer in the Early Modern Period,” Conversions: Medieval and Modern Seminar, Duke University, Durham, NC, Spring 2017.
“The Politics of Compassion in Nicholas Love and Margery Kempe,” Triangle Medieval Studies Seminar, Durham, NC, Fall 2016.
“How to Respond to Suffering: Pity and Ethics in Chaucer,” Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, Spring 2016.
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION
Summer 2024: Session Co-organizer, "Tech Talks: Access and Accessibility in the Medieval Classroom," New Chaucer Society Conference, Pasadena, CA
Fall 2022: Conference co-organizer and planning committee, Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, Birmingham
Spring 2022: Roundtable co-organizer, “Computational Methods in Medieval and Renaissance Digital Humanities,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI
Spring 2021: Session chair, Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
Fall 2019: Session chair, South Eastern Medieval Colloquium, “Gender, Literature, and Authority”
Spring 2018: Conference Organizer, “Digital Matters in Medieval and Renaissance Studies,” Durham, NC
Spring 2017: Session Organizer, “Conversions: Transformations in the Vices and Virtues in Late Medieval England,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI
Spring 2016: Session Co-organizer, “The Nature of Mysticism,” Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN
Spring 2012, 2014: Planning Committee, North Carolina Colloquium in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
INSTITUTIONAL AND DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE
Whitman College
2023-2026 Comprehensive Exam Committees
2023-2024 Jackson Award Committee
Birmingham-Southern College
2019-2023 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee; Chair (2020-21 & 2021-22)
2019-2023 Advisor, Sigma Tau Delta Honor Society
2019-2023 Phi Beta Kappa, Membership Committee, Chair (2020-21 & 2021-22)
2021-2022 Appointments Committee, English Department Search, Co-Chair
2020- 2021 Appointments Committee, English Department Search
2019-2020 Appointments Committee, Library Director Search
2018-2019 Appointments Committee, Creative and Applied Computing Search
Duke University
2017–2018 Leader, Paleography Working Group, Duke University
2016–2017 Mentor for First Year Students, Department of English,
2015–2016 Elected Representative, Duke Graduate English Association
LANGUAGES
Latin (advanced proficiency), Old English (proficient), Italian (advanced reading knowledge; elementary spoken), French and Anglo-Norman (reading knowledge)
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
The Medieval Academy of America; The New Chaucer Society; The International Piers Plowman Society; Modern Language Association; Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship