Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts

About the Contributors

359 About the Contributors Valerie Allen is professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY. She specializes in medieval culture and literature, and continental philosophy. Her publications include essays on Emmanuel Levinas, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger. Her essays have appeared in English Studies, Review of English Studies, and Studia Neophilogia. She has edited an anthology of essays on Chaucer (1997), is the author of On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (2006), and has a long chapter on the history of Middle English literature in English Literature in Context (2007). Ann W. Astell was professor of English at Purdue University, where she chaired the program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. In 2007 she joined the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. The recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship , she is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990); Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (1994); Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (1996); Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (1999); and Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (2006). Moshe Gold is associate professor of English and director of the Rose Hill Writing Program at Fordham University where he teaches courses in literary and critical theory, and pedagogy theory and practice. An editor of Joyce Studies Annual, his own essays on Shakespeare, Joyce, Plato, and Derrida have appeared in Representations, Joyce Studies Annual, Criticism, James Joyce Quarterly, and ELH. Sandor Goodhart is associate professor of English at Purdue University where he teaches courses in “Biblical Reading: The Religious, the Ethical, and the Literary,” “Structuralism and Poststructuralism,” “Shakespeare,” and “Greek Tragedy and Philosophy.” He is a specialist in dramatic literature (Greek tragedy and philosophy, Shakespeare, 360 About the Contributors modern drama), literary theory and criticism (structuralism and poststructuralism , the history of critical theory), and Jewish studies (Hebrew Bible, modern Jewish thought, Holocaust studies). He is the author of Sacrificing Commentary: Reading the End of Literature (1996) and Reading Stephen Sondheim (2000). He is at work on two books: Moebian Nights: Literary Reading after Auschwitz and The Tears of Esau: Reading, Revelation, and the Prophetic. He has published articles in Diacritics, Philosophy and Literature, the Stanford Review, Modern Judaism, Contagion: Journal of Mimesis, Religion, and Culture, among others. He is a member of the editorial boards of Modern Fiction Studies , Contagion: Journal of Mimesis, Religion, and Culture, and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. J. A. Jackson is assistant professor of English at Hillsdale College where he teaches courses in Old and Middle English language and literature, and literary theory (René Girard and Emmanuel Levinas). He specializes in fourteenth century literature, Old and Middle English biblical narrative, and medieval exegesis. His research examines the depiction of violence in literature, focusing especially on the eschatological and the apocalyptic. This has led to his most recent publication in Contagion: Journal of Mimesis, Religion, and Culture (2006), on the deconstruction of mythological violence in the Revelation to John. Eileen A. Joy is assistant professor of English at Southern Illinois University –Edwardsville. She is coeditor of three volumes: The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook (2007), Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (2007), and Premodern to Modern Humanisms: The BABEL Project (2007), a special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory. She regularly contributes articles to the Old English Newsletter. Alexander L. Kaufman is assistant professor of English at Auburn University–Montgomery. He specializes in Middle English language and literature and has articles published and forthcoming on Malory’s Morte D’arthur, medieval outlawry, and the Jack Cade Rebellion About the Contributors 361 of 1450. His current book project, an examination of the historical representations of Cade’s Rebellion, is forthcoming from Ashgate Press. Daniel T. Kline is associate professor of English and graduate program director at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He specializes in Middle English literature and culture, Chaucer, literary and cultural theory, and digital medievalism. His publications include essays in Chaucer Review, Philological Quarterly, College Literature, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Comparative Drama, and the chapter “Female Childhoods” in the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women (2003). He edited Medieval Children’s Literature (2003); is coediting The Medieval in Motion, a volume on contemporary film, TV, and video game neo-medievalism; and is author/webmaster of the Electronic Canterbury Tales (http://www.kankedort.net). Dr. Kline also has essays...