Teacher, writer, medievalist

I am an instructor and literary scholar at Duke University researching late medieval literature and culture.  As a teacher of writing I draw on several years of professional experience in communications, speechwriting, and editing. When teaching and researching in my own field, I emphasize the vivacious, global nature of Medieval culture with a focus on English-Italian literary exchange and the comparison of Persian and European poetry. My dissertation considers several novel literary attempts at introducing labourers into elevated (even divine) symbolic categories in Middle English poetry and drama. Other areas of expertise include eco-criticism, hermeneutics, history of English language, Dante studies, creative writing, and the overlap between mystical and literary texts in the 14th and 15th c.