Professor, Classical Studies, and Chair, Comparative Literature (from July 2002) University of Pennsylvania. I work across a number of fields and periods, including: medieval literature (English, Latin, French); intellectuals, learning, and literacy in medieval Europe; literary theory from ancient to early modern; the history of rhetoric from ancient to early modern. Usually my teaching combines my interests in antiquity and the Middle Ages--or how the Middle Ages understood antiquity. Currently I am working on representations of the intellectual in pre-modern Europe, from late antique rhetorical culture to late medieval university cultures and heretical communities. My other current projects include an anthology of medieval grammatical and rhetorical texts, co-edited with Ineke Sluiter. I am also a co-editor and co-founder of the Medieval Cultures Series (University of Minnesota Press), and co-editor and co-founder of the annual New Medieval Literatures.

Recent graduate courses that I have taught include: Chaucer's Classicisms; Piers Plowman; Introduction to Literary Theory (Comparative Literature); Medieval Education; Premodern Rhetorics. Undergraduate courses that I teach include: History of Literary Theory (Ancient to Modern); Ancient and Medieval Epic and Romance; Prison Narratives from Ancient to Modern.

Books:

Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge, 1991/1995.

Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1996.

Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning. Cambridge, 2001.