American/Medieval

Today on Humanities Viewpoints I talk with professors Gillian Overing and Ulrike Wiethaus about the recent publication of the book they co-edited: American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer. The project began with the Humanities Institute-sponsored interdisciplinary faculty seminar called American/Medieval, which led to the group representing the institute and Wake Forest in organizing a roundtable discussion on the American/Medieval at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2014. We discuss this project from a number of different angles, including developing a definition, connections between American/Medieval and our contemporary world, approaching these topics in the classroom, and future projects inspired by all of these collaborations. To hear even more about the book and to meet some of the contributors, Wake Forest faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend a Book Launch Celebration for American/Medieval at 4:00pm on Tuesday, March 14th in the Ammons Lounge of Tribble Hall. Join us for conversation, readings, and refreshments to celebrate this exciting new work! Gillian R. Overing is a Professor of English at Wake Forest University where she teaches courses in Medieval Narrative, Old English language and literature, Gender and Landscape studies, History of the Language, Linguistics, and Women's and Gender Studies, as well as seminars in the English Major, multiple team-taught Interdisciplinary Honors courses, and seminars in Major British Writers. She received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo before joining the Wake Forest faculty in 1993. She has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and was a Commissioned Editor with Clare A. Lees of Gender and Empire, a special volume of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34.1 (2004). Her books include Language, Sign and Gender in Beowulf (Southern Illinois University Press, 1990); Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World, with Marijane Osborn (University of Minnesota Press, 1994); A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, co-edited with Clare A. Lees (Penn State Press, 2006), Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, with Clare A. Lees (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), reprinted by University of Wales Press, 2009, and most recently American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer, co-edited with Ulrike Wiethaus, (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016). Ulrike Wiethaus received a PhD in Religious Studies from Temple University. She holds a joint appointment in the Department for the Study of Religions and the American Ethnic Studies Program at Wake Forest University. Her research interests focus on the history of Christian spirituality with an emphasis on gender justice and political history, and most recently, historic trauma and the long-term impact of US colonialism. Her most recent book-length publications include American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer, co-edited with Gillian Overing (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); American Indian Women of Proud Nations: Essays on History, Education, and Language, co-edited with Cherry Beasley and Mary Ann Jacobs (Peter Lang Publishing, 2016); Medieval German Mysticism and the Politics of Culture (Peter Lang Publishing, 2015); and Trauma and Resilience in African American and American Indian Southern History, co-edited with Tony Parent (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013).