Jana Mathews is completing her Ph.D. at Duke University where she specializes in medieval English literature. Her dissertation examines the adjacency of statute (royal) law to vernacular literary production in early and late medieval England.  Recent essays have appeared in Notes and Queries (1999) and The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington (Cornell UP, 2002).  Her research interests include law and literature, political theory, and post-Conquest lyric poetry.  She has taught courses on Chaucer and Langland, and the subjects of violence, monstrosity, and religious reform.