PEGGY A. KNAPP
EDUCATION:
B.S., English, University of Wisconsin, 1959
M.S., English, University of Wisconsin, 1961
Ph.D., English, University of Pittsburgh, 1965
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Mount Mercy College (Carlow), Lecturer, 1965-1966
University of Pittsburgh, Lecturer, 1966-1968
University of Connecticut, Assistant Professor, 1968-1969
Carnegie-Mellon University, Assistant Professor, 1970-74
Carnegie-Mellon University, Associate Professor, 1975-88
Universität Augsburg, Visiting Pofessor, 1987 and 1994
Carnegie Mellon University, Professor, 1988-
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Phi Beta Kappa, University of Wisconsin, 1959
Invited Membership in The Medieval Academy of America, 1970
Modern Language Association Certificate for Excellence in Teaching and Contribution to a Basic Course, 1971
Scaife Grants, Summers 1970, 1971
Tuition and Travel Grant to a summer computer institute at the University of Kansas, 1972
Falk Grants, Summers 1973, 1974, 1977
Danforth Associateship, 1974-
Carnegie Corporation grant for the Medieval Semester (with Professor Concetta Greenfield), 1974
ACLS Travel Grant to University of Kent for the meetings of the New Chaucer Society, August, 1990
Elliott Dunlap Smith Award (H&SS College Teaching), 1998/9
Ryan Award (Carnegie Mellon University Teaching), 2003
PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS:
Chaucerian Aesthetics, New York: Palgrave, 2008.
Chaucer and the Social Contest, New York, Routledge, 1990.
Chaucer and the Social Contest, re-published in the series Routledge Revivals, New York and London, 2011.
Time-bound Words: Semantic and Social Economies from Chaucer's England to Shakespeare's, St. Martin's Press, March 2000.
The Style of John Wyclif's English Sermons, The Hague and Paris: Mouton Press, 1977.
Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts, an annual journal launched and edited by Peggy Knapp and Michael Stugrin, Vol. I, 1981. Assays, Vol. II, 1982. Knapp sole editor. Assays, Vol. III, 1985; Vol. IV, 1987; Vol. V, 1989; Vol. VI, 1991; Vol. VII, 1992; Vol. VIII, 1995; Vol. IX, 1996.
ARTICLES:
"John Wyclif as A Bible Translator," Speculum, 46 (October 1971), 7l3-20.
"The Orphic Vision of Pericles" Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15 (Winter 1974), 615-26.
"'Stay Illusion' or How to Teach Hamlet," College English 36 (September, 1974), 75-85.
"Nature Is A Woman," in The Roles and Images of Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, editor, University of Pittsburgh Publications on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1976.
"Gawain's Quest: Social Contradiction and Symbolic Mediation," CLIO, 6 (1977), 289-306.
"Medievalist at the Movies: An Approach to Bertolucci's Last Tango," Interdisciplinary Essays, 5 (1976), 10-15.
John Wyclif and the Horned Patriarchs," American Notes and Queries 14 (1977), 66-67.
"Boccaccio and Chaucer on Cassandra," Philological Quarterly, 56 (Fall, 1977).
"Hamlet and Daniel (and Freud and Marx)," Massachusetts Review, 21 (Fall 1980), 487-501.
"A Course Called Rites of Passage," Iowa English Bulletin-Yearbook, 23 (1976), 26-30.
"The Nature of Nature: Criseyde's 'Slydyng Corage'," Chaucer Review, 13 (Fall 1978), 133-40.
"Disintegration," Exercise Exchange.
"A Sense of Self," in I Could Be Mute, Anita Brostoff, ed., Pittsburgh and London: Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1978, 48-61.
"Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot, ELH, 46 (1979), 577-94.
"Imagination Lost and Found: Beckett's Fiction and Frye's Anatomy,MLN, 95 (1980), 980-994 (with Susan Brienza).
"The Adoration of the Magi by Pieter Brueghel the Younger," Carnegie Magazine, 54 (December 1980), 3-7 (with David Brumble).
"Seeing through Macbeth," PMLA, 96 (1981), 786-98 (with Stephen Leo Carr).
Letter in PMLA, "Forum," 97 (1982), 252-53 (with Stephen Leo Carr).
"Repairing the Ruins," ADE Bulletin, Summer, 1982.
"The Artifice of Time: Gladys Schmitt's The Godforgotten," Studies in Medievalism, 2 (1983), 95-105.
"Gawain and the Middle Ages: Teaching History, Teaching Genre" Approaches to Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an MLA publication (1986), 138-42.
"Women's Freud(e): H. D.'s Tribute to Freud and Gladys Schmitt's Sonnets for an Analyst, Massachusetts Review, 24 (Summer, 1983), 338-52.
"Research in the Humanities," Liberal Education 70 (1984), pp. 95-101 (with Richard M. Cyert).
"The Potion/Poison of Gottfried's Tristan," Assays 3 (1985), 41-56.
"Scholarly Editing and the Common Good," Editor's Notes, 4 (Fall, 1985), 23-25.
"Knowing the Tropes: Literary Exegesis and Chaucer's Clerk," Criticism 28 (Fall, 1985), 331-45.
"Alienated Majesty: Grendel and Its Pretexts," Centennial Review 32 (1988), 1-18.
"Alisoun Weaves A Text," Philological Quarterly (1987), 387-401.
"Wandrynge by the Weye: On Augustine and Alisoun," in Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, ed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 142-57.
"Robyn the Miller's Thrifty Work," in Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Essays on the Theme of Language in Medieval Thought and Literature, ed. Julian Wasserman (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp. 294-308.
"Deconstruction and the Canterbury Tales, Studies in the Age of Chaucer (1987), 73-84.
"Reinhabiting Prospero's Island: Cassavetes' Tempest," in From Literature to Film, ed. Douglas Radcliff-Umsted, Kent State University Press, 1988, pp. 46-54.
"Alisoun of Bath and the Reappropriation of Tradition," Chaucer Review 24 (1989), 45-52.
"Deconstructing the Canterbury Tales: Pro," originally published in Studies in the Age of Chaucer (1987) reprinted in a collection edited by Malcolm Andrew for Open University Press.
"Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot," originally published in ELH (1979) reprinted in Staging the English Renaissance, edited by David Kastan and Peter Stallybrass for Routledge, 1991.
“Sprezzatura in A Changing England: The Case of Shakespeare’s Plays ” The Western Pennsylvania Symposium on World Literatures: 1974-1990, Duquesne University Press, 1992.
"Thrift" in Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr., edited by Robert Edwards, London: D. S. Brewer, 1994.
"Varieties of Medieval Historicism," Chaucer Yearbook: A Journal of Late MedievalStudies I (1992), 157-75.
"Recycling Philology" ADE Bulletin, 106 (Winter, 1993), 13-16.
"Robyn the Miller's Thrifty Work," reprinted from Chaucer and the Social Contest, in Longman's Critical Readers series,Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Steve Ellis (New York: Longman, 1998), pp. 62-77.
"The Words of the Parson's 'Vertuous Sentence,'" in Closure in the Canterbury Tales: The Role of the Parson’s Tale, Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 95-113.
"The 'Plyant' Discourse of Wycherley'sThe Country Wife," Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 40 (summer 2000), 451-72.
"The Work of Alchemy," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 30 (Fall, 2000), 574-599.
"Chaucer Imagines England (In English)," in Imagining A Medieval Community, ed Kathy Lavezzo (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 131-60.
"Criseyde's Beauty: Chaucer and Aesthetics," in New Perspectives on Criseyde, ed. Cindy Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec (Pegasus Press, 2005), pp. 236-59.
“Rethinking the Humanities” in The University of the Future: The Future of the University, ed. Daniel Resnick and Dana Scott (Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004), 23-35. .
“Philology, History, and Cultural Persistence: Troilus and Criseyde as Medieval and Contemporary,” in Approaches to Teaching Troilus and Criseyde and the Minor Poems, ed. Tison Pugh and Angela Weisl, Modern Language Association (2007), 112-16.
“Aesthetic Attention and the Chaucerian Text,” Chaucer Review. 39( 2005), 241-58.
“Chaucer for Fun and Profit,” in ” in Teaching Chaucer in the University, for the series Teaching New English, ed. Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester (Palgrave, 2007), 17-29.
“Ian McEwan’s Saturday and the Aesthetics of Prose,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction(Fall, 2007), 121-43.
“Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger: History and Utopia,” Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, 38summer 09, 319-38.
“Beowulf and the Strange Necessity of Beauty,” inOn the Aesthetics of Beowulf and Other Old English Poems, ed. John M. Hill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 81-100.
“Found in Translation,” co-authored with James F. Knapp, The Medieval Translator, Brepols’ English Language Series. 2010.
REVIEWS:
Linguistics in Proper Perspective by Pose Lamb, Elementary English, National Council of Teachers of English, 104-106 (January 1971).
Transformational Grammar: A Guide for Teachers by Joseph Aurbach et. al., Elementary English, National Council of Teachers of English, 106-107 (Jan. 1971).
Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance ed. by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, Renaaisance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme, NS 7 (1983), 70-73.
The Well and the Tree by Paul C. Bauschatz, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 11 (Winter, 1984). 4 and 10.
Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling by Leonard Koff, Modern Philology 88 (1990), 180-82.
Community, Gender, and Individual Identity by David Aers, Envoi.
Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in the Canterbury Tales, edited by Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter Braeger, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992).
On Philology,edited by Jan Ziokowski, Poetics Today, 1991.
Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context, edited by Barbara Hanawalt, Modern Philology 92, no.1 (August 1994), pp. 87-89.
Brief review of Siege: Castles at War, by Mark Donnelly and Daniel Diehl, for Taylor Publishing, Dallas TX
The Chaucer Bibliographies: The Miller's Tale, The Reeve's Tale, The Cook's Tale, ed. L. T. Burton and Rosemary Greentree Speculum 74 (July 1999), 709.
Chaucer's Open Books, by Rosemarie P. McGerr, Studies in the Age of Chaucer. 20 (1999). 371-73.
Chaucer in Context, by S. H. Rigby, Speculum 75 (October 2000), 982-84.
On the Truth of Holy Scripture, John Wyclif, trans. with intro. and notes Ian Christopher Levy, The Medieval Review (on line).
Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honor of Anne Hudson, ed. Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison, The Medieval Review (on line).
Reviews of Lysistrata, Urinetown, Nathan the Wise, and As you like it for Focus.(2005-06).
Inventing English by Seth Lerer, for Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies (July 2008): 725-26).
Cultural Reformations, ed. Brian Cummings and James Simpson, Speculum 2011.
CONFERENCE PAPERS:
"The Medieval Semester," Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English Convention, Penn State University, University Park, October, 1972.
"Nature Is a Woman," Colloquium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Pittsburgh, October, 1973.
Slide talk, "The Medieval Semester," Carnegie Museum's Medieval Festival, February, 1974. "Chaucer's Use of Boccaccio," Boccaccio Celebration, Duquesne University, April, 1975.
"Seeking the Past: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Ohio Conference on Medieval Studies, Cleveland, October, 1975.
"The Nature of Nature: Criseyde's Slydyng Corage," Ohio Conference on Medieval Studies, Cleveland, October 1976.
"The Medievalism of Gladys Schmitt's The Godforgotten," Twelfth Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 1977.
"Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot," Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, March, 1980.
"Medieval England's First Popular Literature," Popular Culture Association Convention, Pittsburgh, April, 1980.
"The Rhetoric of A Fairytale," Symposium on Rhetoric and Literature Carnegie-Mellon, November, 1979.
Panel discussant on "Scholarly Publishing in Journals," Medieval Academy of America, Annual Meeting, May 8, 1982.
"Scholarly Publication and the Common Good," Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Hartford, March 29, 1985.
"Tristan's Potion and Plato's Pharmacy," Twentieth Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11, 1985.
"Literary History in an Age of Theory," GRIP Conference, Miami of Ohio, June 8, 1985.
"Historicizing Shakespeare's Histories," talk and seminar presented at the University of Augsburg, May 27, 1985.
One of four college teachers in the Commonwealth Partnership Summer Institute for secondary school teachers, held at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, June 23-July 12. I gave four formal lectures to 50 participants and taught 18 seminars to groups of 10.
Talk on critical approaches to literature to the faculties of Shadyside and Sewickly Academies, November 25, 1985.
Talk on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to an advanced senior English class at Allderdice High School, December 19, 1985.
"Deconstruction and the Canterbury Tales," New Chaucer Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 22, 1986.
"Bakhtin, Freud and Chaucer's Miller," NEMLA, Boston, April 3, 1987.
"Deconstruction and Pre-modern Texts," talks presented to the faculty-student seminar in literary theory, University of Augsburg, July 17 and 24, 1987.
Talks on genre in Shakespeare for classes in literary history, University of Augsburg, July 9 and 16, 1987.
Induction address for the Cum Laude Society, Winchester-Thurston School, May 17, 1990.
"Some Observations on Historicist Interpretation," New Chaucer Society, University of Kent, Canterbury, England, August 7, 1990.
"The Cultural Work (and Play) of Words," Oklahoma Conference on Cultural Criticism, October 20, 1990.
"Alisoun Looms: Chaucer's Wife of Bath and the Promise/Threat of Feminism," sponsored by the Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Cultures and the Women's Studies Committee, presented at Clarion College, November 8, 1990.
"Opening Questions Hitherto Closed," MLA, December 30, 1990.
“Sprezzatura in A Changing England: The Case of Shakespeare’s Plays ”Western Pennsylvania Symposium on World Literatures, Duquesne University April, 1991.
""What's Left," 27th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 8, 1992.
"Philology without Guilt," MLA's Associated Departments of English Conference, Tempe Arizona, June 5, 1992.
"Cultural Theory and Chaucerian Texts," New Chaucer Society, Seattle Washington, August 2, 1992.
"Alisoun Looms: Chaucer and the Fabric of History," public lecture sponsored by the Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, October 8, 1992.
"Alisoun Looms: Chaucer and the Fabric of History," public lecture, sponsored by the Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Montreal, October 8, 1992.
"Keywords" paper presented at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, March 28, 1994.
Colloquium on Shakespeare's The Tempest, Universität Erlangen, July 10, 1994.
"Traces of the Medieval in Early Protestant Polemical Drama," 31st International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11, 1996.
"Chaucer and Cultural Studies," New Chaucer Society Conference, Los Angeles, July, 1996.
"Words and Their Work: Providence in Early Modern England," Helen Ann Robbins Lecture, University of Rochester, November 1, 1996.
"Raising Feminist Issues for Undergraduate Students," MLA, Chicago, December 27, 1999.
"The Work of Alchemy in Chaucer and Jonson," Medieval and Renaissance Studies Lectures, University of Pittsburgh, Jan. 21, 2000.
"Imagining Nationhood in the Late Middle Ages: Benedict Anderson and Geoffrey Chaucer," English Department Colloquium, Carnegie Mellon, February 24, 2000.
"Correctness, Aesthetic Pleasure, and Chaucerian Texts," New Chaucer Society, London, July 15, 2000.
“Cities of God: Augustine’s and Doctorow’s,” Western Pennsylvania Symposium on World Literatures, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 24, 2001.
“Alchemy in Chaucer, Jonson, and Marx,” Marxist Literary Group Institute on Culture and Society, Carnegie Mellon University, June 17, 2002.
“Devising Criseyde’s Beauty,” New Chaucer Society13th Biennial Conference, Boulder, Colorado, July 19, 2002.
Public discussion with Felix Nobis, the translator and actor who performed Beowulf: The Whole Bloody Story for the Unseamed Shakespeare Company, and Kellie Robertson, medieval scholar, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2002.
“Chaucer and Historical Interpretation,” New Chaucer Society 14th Biennial Conference, Glasgow, July 18, 2004.
“New Light on Old Plays: Shakespeare and Current Criticism,” Carnegie Mellon, arranged by the A.L.L. people, September 19, 2005.
Chair, conference session “Theory,” New Chaucer Society 145h Biennial Conference, New York City, July 28, 2006.
“Beauty, Truth, and Genre in the Franklin’s Tale,” New Chaucer Society, Swansea, Wales, July 2008.
"Thinking about Thinking, Then and Now, New Chaucer Society 165h Biennial Conference, July 2010, Siena, Italy.
“Kant and the Middle Ages,” International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 13, 2011.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:
Planner and participant, "Conference on Teaching and the English Departments," held at the University of Pittsburgh under a U.S. Office of Education grant, April, 1971.
Consultant, Medieval Festival, Carnegie Museum, February, 1974.
Advisory committee, Petrarch Celebration, Duquesne University, April, 1974.
Advisory Committee, Boccaccio Celebration, Duquesne University, April, 1975.
Chairman, Chaucer Section, Ohio Conference on Medieval Studies, Cleveland, October, 1976.
Participant, various meetings of the Modern Language Association, Northeast Modern Language Association, Conference on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University), and Ohio Conference on Medieval Studies (Cleveland).
Consultant to W.W. Norton and Company on a new edition of Shakespeare's plays, May, 1977.
Steering Committee and discussion leader, Higher Education Resource Services Conference (HERS, a Ford Foundation-supported organization administered from the University of Pennsylvania), March, 1977.
Section organizer, "The Mind's Road: Critical Approaches to Medieval Texts," Fifteenth Conference on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University), May, 1980.
Advisory Board, Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies,published by Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, SUNY, Binghamton, N.Y.
Referee for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Advisor for the MLA volume on teaching medieval English drama.
Advisory Board, Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature, Columbia University.
Reader for PMLA,Feminist Studies, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Chaucer Review, Exemplaria, Modern Philology
External examiner in Chaucer and the Middle Ages, Swarthmore College Honors Program, 1992, 1993.
External examiner for Karen Arthur's doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, November 11, 1993
Trustee, New Chaucer Society, 1994-98. Chair, Nominating Committee for Trustees, 1995.
Organizer "Chaucer, Culture, and Society," New Chaucer Society Conference, Dublin, Ireland, July 25, 1994
Organizer and Chair, “Chaucerian Aesthetics: Theory, Practice, Pleasure,” New Chaucer Society, Boulder, Colorado, July 19, 2002.
Public discussion with Felix Nobis, the translator and actor who performed Beowulf: The Whole Bloody Story for the Unseamed Shakespeare Company, and Kellie Robertson, medieval scholar, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2002.
Advisory Board, Chaucer Review
PRINCIPAL COURSES TAUGHT:
Shakespeare (Carnegie Mellon and University of Augsburg)
Advanced Shakespeare
Drama Before 1642
Rites of Passage Blake and Hesse (Student-Generated Mini-Course)
Medieval Latin (Tutorial offered in connection with the Medieval semester)
Romance, Mysticism, and Drama Before 1500
Medieval Literature
Literary Imagination
Medieval Authors: Arthurian Literature
Epic and Romance
The Literature and Art of the Middle Ages
Chaucer
Shakespeare's Contemporaries
Modal Criticism
Fiction and Fact
Writing from the Pittsburgh Region
Discourse and Historical Change
History of English Styles
Reading Twentieth-Century Culture
Re-reading the English Renaissance
The Social Novel
Cultural Practices and Literary Production: The London Stage 1580-1620
Renaissance Drama and Historical Interpretation
English Theater before 1700
Interpretive Practices
Freshman Seminar: Jane Austen's Fictions in Print and on Film
Utopias
Shakespeare and Film
Senior Seminar: Past and Present
Re-thinking Aesthetics
Literary and Cultural Studies II
Arthurian Romance and Its Modern Legacy
Allegory and Figura, Allegory/Realism
UNIVERSITY SERVICE:
Faculty Senator and member of the Senate Executive Committee
Faculty Senate secretary (twice)
University committee on tenured appointments (three two-year terms)