Faculty

Jessica Boon, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (Religious Studies). Assistant Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Church History, Perkins School of Theology (SMU). Dr. Boon's teaching specialties include history of pre-Tridentine Catholic thought and practice, Christian mysticism (negative theology, visionary experience, Passion-centered devotion), religion in Renaissance Spain, and gender and religion.  Her research interests include recollection mysticism (recogimiento), Franciscan spirituality, and the themes of Christology, Mariology, and Trinitarian theology in various Castilian mystical and visionary works from 1500-1550.  She was the winner of the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 2007 Bishko prize for best article on Iberian history by a North American scholar for “Agony of the Virgin: Mary Fainted, Mary Crucified in Sixteenth Century Castilian Passion Treatises,” Sixteenth Century Studies 38.1 (2007): 3-26.  Her other publications include  “Mother Juana de la Cruz: Marian Visions and Female Preaching,” Companion to Spanish Mysticism, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Brill Press, 2010); “Medical Bodies, Mystical Bodies: Medieval Physiological Theology in the Recollection Mysticism of Bernardino de Laredo,” Viator 39.2 (2008): 245-68; “A Mystic in the Age of the Inquisition: Bernardino de Laredo's Converso Environment and Christological Spirituality,” Medieval Encounters: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Confluence and Dialogue 12.2 (2006): 133-52; and “Trinitarian Love Mysticism: Hadewijch, Ruusbroec, and the Gendered Experience of the Divine,” Church History 72 (2003): 484-503.

Irina Dumitrescu, Ph.D., Yale University. Assistant Professor of English, Southern Methodist University. Dr. Dumitrescu specializes in Anglo-Saxon literature, and is currently working on a book-length study of the role of suffering in literary depictions of student-teacher encounters in Old English and Anglo-Latin texts. Her research interests include performance studies, language learning, and sex, violence and humour in the Middle Ages. Her publications include “The Grammar of Pain in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 45:3 (2009): 239-253; and “Violence, Performance and Pedagogy in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies,” forthcoming in Exemplaria.

Jo Goyne, M.A., Southern Methodist University. Senior Lecturer in English, Director of the First-year Writing Program, Southern Methodist University; and Laura Kesselman Devlin Instructor of English 1995–96. Professor Goyne, recognized for the excellence and clarity of her teaching, is also Associate Editor of the scholarly journal Arthuriana, the official journal of the International Arthurian Society, North American Branch; as well as a past Co-Editor of Criteria, A Journal of Rhetoric (92–93; 93–94), a publication of the First-Year Writing Program at Southern Methodist University. In addition to her administrative and editorial obligations, Ms. Goyne has published several articles on medieval English literature, medieval thought, and gender / women’s studies, including: "Parataxis and Causality in the Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake," "Pleasing Virtue: The Problem of Word and Will in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale," and "Arthurian Dreams and Medieval Dream Theory". Ms. Goyne is committed to pedagogy and has lectured on the subject at a number of conferences, including: "Teaching Arthurian Materials in a First-Year Writing Course".

Valerie A. Karras, Ph.D., Catholic University of America. Associate Professor of Church History, Southern Methodist University. 

Pamela Patton, Ph.D., Boston University. Associate Professor of Art History, Southern Methodist University. Professor Pastton is an Associate Professor in the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU. Her projects have won grants from the Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Her first book, Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister: Cloister Imagery and Religious Life in Medieval Spain (Peter Lang, 2004), is in its second printing; a second book, Aliens in Their Midst: Jews in the Christian Imagination of the Iberian Reconquest, is forthcoming. Teaching interests include the art and architectrue of medieval Iberia, Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Europe, art of the medieval courts, and symbol and storytelling in medieval art. Dr. Patton received a B.A.  from Tufts University, an M.A. in art history from Williams College, and a Ph.D. in art history from Boston University. She is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University, where she also served as curator of the Meadows Museum from 1993 to 2000. Dr. Patton teaches Monsters, Mayhem, and Miracles for the Talented and Gifted program.

Silvio De Santis, Ph.D, University of Cagliari (Italy), Adjunct Professor Southern Methodist University. Dr. De Santis main interests are agrarian history, social history, history of food and nutrition, medieval slavery and, the relationships between the men and the environment. His researches focus on Western Mediterranean during the late Middle Ages. Before joining SMU he taught at University of Tuscia (Italy) for 6 years. He recently published a volume which offers original insights into land Lordship and agrarian topics on the border between the States of the Church and the Kingdom of Naples (San Paterniano di Ceprano, Un’azienda agraria della Camera Apostolica nel Lazio meridionale, 2007). He is currently proofing a monograph that addresses complex questions on economic sides, social conflicts, colonial policies, family strategies, agriculture productions, in Italy, its isles, and the Kingdom of Aragon (11th -14th C).

Bonnie Wheeler, Ph.D., Brown University. Associate Professor of English, and Director of the Medieval Studies Program, Southern Methodist University. Dr. Wheeler’s major interests are medieval romance (especially Arthurian), Chaucer, gender studies, and pedagogy. She is founding editor of Arthuriana, the quarterly journal of the International Arthurian Society/North American Branch. She served as editor of Arthuriana from 1994-2009, when the journal moved to Purdue University. Professor Wheeler has edited or co-edited co-edited the essay collections: Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages, Texas Medieval Association (Cambridge, UK and Dallas: Academia Press, 1993); Medieval Mothering, co-edited with John Carmi Parsons (New York: Garland, 1996); Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc, co-edited with Charles T. Wood (New York: Garland, 1996); Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, co-edited with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Garland, 1997) ; Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); The Malory Debate: The Texts of Le Morte Darthur, co-edited with Robert L. Kindrick and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2000); On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, co-edited with Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001) [Nominated for Mythopoeic Scholarship Award 2002]; Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, co-edited with John Carmi Parsons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Joan of Arc and Spirituality, co-edited with Ann Astell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field (Cambridge, UK: Brewer, 2004); Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Her most recent work includes finishing the scholarly heritage of Mary Martin McLaughlin in a new translation of the Collected Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and a forthcoming biography of the Abbess Heloise.

 
Prof. Wheeler is in her fourth decade as Director of the Medieval Studies Program at Southern Methodist University.  She has received more than 20 teaching awards, including the Perrine Prize of Phi Beta Kappa for excellence in scholarship and teaching. Wheeler has published more than 30 peer-reviewed scholarly articles in her field; delivered more than 100 scholarly lectures and presentations; and appeared in more than a dozen documentaries (and provided scores of consultancies on Medieval Studies) for the Arts & Entertainment Network, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the British Broadcasting Company, and Warner Brothers. She has organized more than 24 scholarly conferences. She is creator and series editor of The New Middle Ages in which more than 120 peer-reviewed books have now appeared.

 
On the national and international fronts, Wheeler served on the Nominating Committee for the Phi Beta Kappa Society, was an internationally elected Councillor of the Medieval Academy of America, was Vice President and President of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and has served on the Board of Directors of the International Medieval Society (Paris).

 
Wheeler is the founder and first Chair of the Consortium for Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS), which is now a thriving independent organization helping medievalists in schools and colleges through its publication series and innovative conference presentations. She founded and is currently Director of the International Joan of Arc Society, as well as a Founding Chair of the Dallas chapter of Veteran Feminists of America.

Eric M. White, Ph.D., Boston University. Curator of Special Collections, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University. Dr. White has been Curator of Special Collections at Bridwell Library since 1997. He was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, earned his doctorate in Art History from Boston University in 1995, and received his Master of Library Science degree from the University of North Texas, Denton. Since coming to SMU his research has focused mainly on Bridwell Library's rare books and manuscripts, with emphasis on Gutenberg and the spread of early printing. His publications include an in-depth commentary for the CD-ROM facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible at the University of Texas, Austin (2005), two articles in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (2002 and 2006), and the catalogues for the Bridwell exhibitions "Peter Schoeffer: Printer of Mainz" (2003) and "Six Centuries of Master Bookbinding at Bridwell Library" (2006, with Dr. Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch and John McQuillen). He lectures widely on early printing topics, and was invited to speak on 15th-century illustrated books at the Library of Congress in 2005. His wife, Dr. Pamela Patton, is Associate Professor of Art History in the Meadows School of the Arts. In 1999, they collaborated on the Meadows Museum exhibition Faith in Conflict: Devotional Images and Forbidden Books from Spain’s Counter Reformation.

Alicia R. Zuese, Ph.D., Columbia University.  Assistant Professor of Golden Age Spanish Literature, SMU. Dr. Zuese’s research interests encompass the medieval and early modern periods of Spanish literature. In particular, she is interested in literary representations of communicative practices, urban culture, space, festivals, and emblems. She also studies the participation of women in urban culture, and a forthcoming essay investigates writer Ana Caro and the representation of women in literary academies. She is currently working on her book project that examines the structure and content of the medieval exempla and early modern novella collections as a means to access social, cultural, and political transformations that Spain underwent in these key periods of national definition and imperial decline.