Co-Directors
David Coley (Associate Professor, English, Simon Fraser University) teaches medieval literature, with an emphasis on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He is currently working on the Black Death and the shape it assumes in late-medieval English poetry. Website | Email
Derrick Higginbotham (Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa) teaches late medieval and early modern English literature, working at the intersection of queer theory, critical race studies, and eco-criticism. He is finishing a book entitled Winners and Wasters: Gender, Economics and Theater in England, c. 1350 – c. 1650. Email
Advisory Council
Courtney Barajas (Assistant Professor of English & Director of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Whitworth University in Spokane) works at the intersection of literary, environmental, and religious studies. When she’s not reading or teaching, Courtney spends her time hiking, kayaking, and adding to her collection of cacti. Website | Email
Noah Guynn (Professor, French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis) is a specialist in medieval and early modern literature and drama. He has recently published a monograph with the University of Pennsylvania Press, Pure Filth: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Early French Farce, and has coedited (with Marilynn Desmond) a volume of Romanic Review entitled Category Crossings: Bruno Latour and Medieval Modes of Existence. Email
Allan Mitchell (Professor, English, University of Victoria) works across a range of medieval genres and is currently writing about how scientific texts and technical objects functioned as environmental interfaces. Email
Leila Kate Norako (Assistant Professor, English, University of Washington) specializes in late medieval literature and culture, and also contemporary medievalisms. She is a co-blogger at In the Medieval Middle, and PI of the digital project The Richard Coer de Lyon Multitext. When not teaching or writing, she can be found galavanting around PNW parks and beaches with her children and spouse or dancing traditional hula with Nā Lei ‘O Manu’akepa. Website | Email
Sharon O’Dair (Professor Emerita, English, University of Alabama) currently lives in Berkeley, California and writes about Shakespeare, ecology, social class, and the profession of literary studies. Email
Kenna Olsen (Professor, English, Languages, and Cultures) works in Old and Middle English literatures, and is currently musing about how the environments of place, space, and time actualize and effect in literatures. Email | Website
Scott Russell (PhD Student, English, Simon Fraser University) is an Oecologist.
Kirsten Schuhmacher (PhD Candidate, English, University of California, Davis) studies early modern poetry & prose and rhetoric through an ecocritical lens. Most of the time, you can find her talking to her plants and learning about new trees. Email
Breanne Weber (PhD Candidate, English, University of California, Davis) is obtaining her Ph.D. in English Literature with a designated emphasis in Science and Technology Studies. Her research interests include early modern women’s writing, environmental humanities, history of science/the book, and digital humanities. Email
Members’ and Collaborators’ Bookshelf
If you have questions about our webpage or our programming, please contact Sarah-Nelle Jackson.