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Emily Steiner

Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English

(she/her/hers)

Fisher-Bennett Hall 312
215-898-7033
Portrait of Emily Steiner

Emily Steiner received her BA from Brown University and her PhD from Yale. She is the author of three books, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Reading 'Piers Plowman'  (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c.1400 (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).  She has co-edited several collection of essays, The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2002), with Candace Barrington, Thinking Historically About Historicism (a special issue of the Chaucer Review, 2014), with Lynn Ransom, Taxonomies of Knowledge: Information and Order in Medieval Manuscripts (forthcoming, 2015), and with Jen Jahner and Elizabeth Tyler, The Cambridge History of History Writing: England and Britain, 500-1500. She is a trustee of the New Chaucer Society and Director of the International Piers Plowman Society. Her articles have appeared in The Yearbook of Langland Studies, New Medieval Literatures, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Representations, and Exemplaria, among other journals.  Her research interests extend to natural history and the history of encyclopedism, law and literature, drama and ritual performance, and Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages. Her teaching interests include Old English literature, Chaucer, Arthurian literature, and poetry of all periods.

Publications

News & Events

Doctoral Dissertations Chaired

2023

Matthew Aiello "Writing Under Duress: Trauma and Repetition in Early England, 1065-1250 "

2020

Anna Johnson Lyman "Reading the Past: Ruins and Historical Writing in England, 800-1400"

2019

Mariah Min "Damned If You Do: Judas Iscariot and the Invention of Medieval Literary Character"

2018

Erika Smith Harman "The Art of the Question in Late Medieval England"
Sierra Lomuto "Exotic Allies: Mongol Alterity and Racial Formation in the Global Middle Ages, 1220-1400"

2017

Jacqueline Marie Burek "Mending a Broken Chain: Continuous History and Literary Form in England and Wales, 1125-1450"

2016

Alexander Devine "A Portable Feast: The Production and Use of the Thirteenth-Century Portable Bible 1200-1500 "
Lydia Yaitsky Kertz "Luxury, Aesthetics and Politics: The Social Lives of Medieval Romance "

2014

Marie Turner "Beyond Romance: Genre and History in England, 1066-1400"

2009

Cristina Pangilinan "Poetry and London Learning: Chaucer, Gower, USK, Langland and Hoccleve"

Courses Taught

fall 2024

ENGL 5995.401 Digital Humanities Praxis  

summer 2024

spring 2024

ENGL 7220.401 Vernacular Epistemologies  

spring 2023

ENGL 2014.401 Premodern Animals  

fall 2022

summer 2022

ENGL 5240.941 MLA Proseminar: Medieval Performances canceled  

fall 2021

ENGL 525.640 MLA Chaucer  

summer 2021

spring 2021

ENGL 524.301 Medieval Worlds  

fall 2020

ENGL 016.301 Medieval Worlds  
ENGL 218.301 Old English  

summer 2020

spring 2020

ENGL 715.401 Medieval Performances  

fall 2019

ENGL 311.301 The English Honors Program  

summer 2019

ENGL 421.940 MLA Proseminar: Medieval Worlds canceled  

spring 2019

ENGL 018.001 Old English  

spring 2018

ENGL 524.301 Topics in Medieval Literature canceled  
ENGL 715.301 Medieval Worlds  

fall 2017

summer 2017

ENGL 425.940 Canterbury Tales canceled  

spring 2017

ENGL 524.301 Medieval Performances  

fall 2016

summer 2016

ENGL 225.950 Chaucer at Large  

spring 2016

ENGL 016.302 Medieval Worlds  

fall 2015

summer 2015

ENGL 421.940 Medieval Worlds  

spring 2014

ENGL 218.301 Beowulf  

fall 2013

ENGL 016.302 Medieval Worlds  
ENGL 524.301 Piers Plowman  

summer 2013

spring 2013

fall 2012

ENGL 524.301 Medieval Performances  

summer 2012

spring 2012

ENGL 020.301 Literature Before 1660  
ENGL 221.401 Medieval Performances  

spring 2011

ENGL 018.001 Old English  

fall 2010

ENGL 025.001 Chaucer at Large  
ENGL 524.401 Piers Plowman  

summer 2009

spring 2009

spring 2008

ENGL 218.301 Beowulf  
ENGL 701.301 Piers Plowman  

spring 2007

summer 2005

ENGL 524.940 Medieval Performances  

spring 2005

ENGL 311.301 The Honors Program  

fall 2004

ENGL 321.301 Medieval Authorship  
ENGL 701.401 Piers Plowman  

spring 2004

fall 2003

ENGL 501.301 Old English  

spring 2002

fall 2001

ENGL 025.001 Chaucer  
ENGL 715.301 Medieval Performances  

spring 2001

ENGL 018.001 Old English  
ENGL 225.301 Medieval Performances  

fall 2000

ENGL 701.401 Piers Plowman  

spring 2000

ENGL 018.001 Old English  
ENGL 225.301 Topics in Chaucer  

fall 1999