Dr. Steiner: Watkins Chair in
the Humanities
Dr. Emily Steiner, assistant
professor of English,
has been appointed the M. Mark & Esther K. Watkins
Assistant Professor in the Humanities, SAS Dean Samuel
Preston has announced.
Since Dr. Steiner joined the
Department of English faculty in 1999, she has been active
in the Penn writing community, organizing events for the
Kelly Writers House, serving as a discussion leader for
the Penn Reading Project, and participating in the Graduate
Program in Folklore and Folklife. She has taught undergraduate
and graduate courses on the English language, Old English
literature, Chaucer, and poetry, including a team-taught
course for the Pilot Curriculum devoted to the Roman poet
Ovid's Metamorphoses.
She completed her B.A. with honors
at Brown before earning her Ph.D. with distinction at
Yale.
Although Dr. Steiner is especially
interested in studying William Langland's 14th-century
poem Piers Plowman, her other research interests
include literature written by followers of John Wycliffe
(Lollards) during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries;
medieval drama and ritual performance; vernacular literacy
and generic authority; and Jewish-Christian relations
in the Middle Ages. Extensive research in these fields
has earned her honors including an American Council of
Learned Societies Fellowship, Huntington Library/British
Academy Fellowship for Research in England, Penn Faculty
Research Fellowship, and Weiler Faculty Humanities Research
Fellowship.
This past May, Dr. Steiner's
book, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval
English Literature, was published by Cambridge University
Press. She also recently co-edited and contributed to
The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary
Production in Medieval England, a collection of essays
on law and literature. In addition to publishing essays
in New Directions in Wycliffite Study: Heresy and Reform
and Yearbook of Langland Studies, Dr. Steiner's
most recent work will be included in forthcoming volumes
of New Medieval Literatures and Studies in the
Age of Chaucer.
This chair was established
by a 1969 bequest from Mark Watkins and his wife Esther
to support a chair in the humanities. Mr. Watkins,
who earned his chemical engineering degree in 1921, was
a member of Alpha Chi Sigma and Alembec Senior Society.
In his professional life, he served as president of Conoflow
Corporation.
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