Lynn Arner

English Language & Literature

Associate Professor

Areas of Specialization:

Lynn Arner is cross-appointed between the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of English. Preceding her appointment at Brock, she held a visiting faculty post at the University of Pittsburgh. Her book, Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising: Poetry and the Problem of the Populace after 1381  (Penn State University Press, 2013), examines the emergence of vernacular literature in relation to new readers from the upper strata of non-ruling urban classes in the wake of the English Rising of 1381. Professor Arner has begun work on her second book-project, which investigates intersections among discourses of gender, class, and ethnicity in medieval texts in relation to England's efforts to colonize Wales, Ireland, and Scotland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Professor Arner works in late medieval English literature, women's and gender studies, contemporary theory, and cultural studies.

Selected Recent Publications:

Book

Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising: Poetry and the Problem of the Populace after 1381. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press (2013).

Edited Collections

Guest Editor, Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 19.1 (Spring 2007).

"Feminism and the Academy: A Panel Discussion," edited by Lynn Arner and Katherine French. Medieval Feminist Forum 29 (Spring 2000): 8-32.

Articles

"Chaucer and the Moving Image in Pre-World War II America." In Cinema Chauceriana, edited by Tison Pugh and Kathleen Kelly.

"Working-Class Women in the Tenure Track." In Staging Women's Lives in Academia, edited by Michelle Masse and Nan Bauer-Maglin.

Introduction, Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 19.1 (Spring 2007). Reprinted in Medieval Feminist Forum 43.1 (Summer 2007): 108-125.

"Trust No Man But Me: Women in Chaucer's Short Poetry." In Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the Shorter Poems, edited by Angela Jane Weisl and Tison Pugh, 71-75. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007.

"The Ends of Enchantment: Colonialism and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48:2 (Summer 2006): 79-101.

"History Lessons from the End of Time: Gower and the English Rising of 1381." Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History 31 (2002): 237-255.

"Studied Indifference: Institutional Problems for Feminist Medievalists." Medieval Feminist Forum 29 (Spring 2000): 8-12.

Sample Courses:

WISE/ENGL 3P67, "Feminist Cultural Theory"

ENGL 4V06, "Medieval English Literature and Social Control"

ENGL 4V07, "Medieval English Literature: Texts & Conquests"

WISE 2P91, "Historical Perspectives on Women"

WISE/ENGL 2Q99, "Women and Literature"

ENGL 2P19, Chaucer

ENGL 4P70, "Structuralist & Post-Structuralist Theory"

ENGL 5V13 (graduate), "Chaucer and the Beginnings of English Literature"

ENGL 5P00 (graduate), "Theoretical Foundations"