Susanna Fein, Professor of English, Coordinator of the Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Minor, and Fellow of the Institute for Bibliography and Editing, has taught at Kent State since 1985. In the Department of English she has served terms as Undergraduate Studies Coordinator (1991-94) and Chair (2000-04). Her research focuses on the literatures, languages, and manuscripts of medieval England, ca. 1100-1500.

Professor Fein edits The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism, a quarterly learned journal that has been published by The Pennsylvania State University Press since 1966. She is the recipient of many grants, including four from the National Endowment of the Humanities, one from the Ohio Humanities Council, and a KSU Retention Grant that allowed the English Undergraduate Studies Center to be established in 2001.

The author of many books and articles, Professor Fein frequently presents her research at national and international conferences. She currently serves as a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society, and she is on the Advisory Board of the Middle English Texts Series, based at the University of Rochester, and the Editorial Board of The Journal of the Early Book Society. In addition, she has refereed awards conferred by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and she has served terms on the KSU Press Editorial Board and the KSU Foundation Board of Trustees.

As someone who loves to teach, Professor Fein looks for students who relish the study of literature, history, culture, and languages, and who are curious about human differences across time, be they in the realms of philosophy, religion, anthropology, psychology, or the arts. In the summer months Professor Fein undertakes archival research in the manuscript rooms of great libraries, and during term what she has discovered renews her teaching, so that unusual literary experiences dug from medieval manuscripts may sharpen our critical perspective upon a time in the past quite different from our own.

In summer 2008 Professor Fein will co-direct an NEH seminar on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Designed for American high school teachers, the seminar will take place in London and Canterbury, England, and occur June 22 to July 18, 2008.

Teaching Interests

Chaucer; Arthurian Romance; Readings in Medieval Literature (English and Continental); Manuscripts and Paleography; Robin Hood; Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Texts; Drama to Shakespeare; Great Books

Research Interests

Chaucer; Middle English poetry (i.e., alliterative verse, the Harley Lyrics, the verse of John the Blind Audelay, etc.); English manuscripts, scribes, and illustration; textual editing; multilingualism in medieval England; metrics

Select Publications

Books (Critical Editions)

• John the Blind Audelay, Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302). Forthcoming 2008.

• Moral Love Songs and Laments. 1998.

Books (Edited Collections)

• Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches. Forthcoming 2008. (Coedited with David Raybin.)

• My Wyl and My Wrytyng: Essays on John the Blind Audelay. Forthcoming 2008.

• Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253. 2000.

• Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Foreword by Derek Pearsall. 1991. (Coedited with David Raybin and Peter C. Braeger.)

Journal Special Issues

• The Legacy of New Criticism: Revisiting the Work of E. Talbot Donaldson. The Chaucer Review 41.3 (2007): 213-323. (Coedited with David Raybin, Bonnie Wheeler, and Carolynn Van Dyke.)

• Chaucer and Aesthetics. The Chaucer Review 39.3 (2005): 225-340. (Coedited with David Raybin.)

Descriptive Bibliography

• "The Lyrics of MS Harley 2253." In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500. Volume 11. Ed. Peter G. Beidler. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005. Pp. 4168-4206, 4311-4361.

Journal Editorship

• The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism. Editor since 2001. Quarterly journal, founded 1966 and published by The Pennsylvania State University Press.