My teaching and writing at Washington University have developed from my graduate work on the prose texts of Geoffrey Chaucer. My editions of those four works were published in The Norton Chaucer (2019). Chaucer’s linking of science (A Treatise on the Astrolabe) and poetry led to my interest in the medical humanities. Three of my classes in English (L13 307 Writing and Medicine, L14 391W Literature and Medicine, L14 151 Stories of Medicine) serve as core courses in the Medical Humanities minor.
My other classes at Washington University have developed from my work with Chaucer. The course L14 472 History of the English Language helps students understand how Modern English descends from Old English and Middle English. The course Prose Style in English: History and Craft (L13 413) considers the development of prose in English from Chaucer to the present. My course The Sentence in English (L13 203) uses traditional (Reed-Kellogg) sentence diagramming to help students consider the craft of prose in a technical way. The textbook for that course is my own The Architecture of a Sentence, which is currently under review for publication. I invite students who want to think about language and writing in higher-level ways to take one of these courses.
