Education
B.A. Stanford University, English and Classics
M.A., Ph.D. University of Virginia, English Language and Literature
Employment
Katharine Lee Bates and Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English (2000-)
Director, Wellesley College Freedom Project (2018-2020)
Dean of Faculty Affairs (2010 - 17)
Chair, Wellesley English Dept. (1998-2001, 2007-10)
Co-Director, Writing Program (1988-91, 1997-98)
Co-Director, Medieval/Renaissance Studies Program (1995-96, 2005-06, Director, 2006-07)
Assistant and Associate Professor, Wellesley College
Lecturer, UCLA, Writing Programs
Publications
Books
Editor of Norton Critical edition, Geoffrey Chaucer, Dream Visions and Other Poems (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007). Rev. Ed. Dream Poetry in The Norton Chaucer, gen. ed. David Lawton (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019).
Editor of Chaucer's Cultural Geography (New York: Routledge 2002).
Chaucer's Philosophical Visions (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000).
The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1988).
Articles, Reviews, and Occasional Pieces
2025:
"Dreams,” in The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer, ed. Craig Bertolet and Susan Nakley, in The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer, ed. Craig Bertolet and Susan Nakley (New York: Routledge, 2025), 118-28.
2023:
Review of Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize, Beowulf as Children's Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021), for Speculum 98 (2023): 255-57.
Entries for The Chaucer Encyclopedia on Colatyn (Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus); Lucrece, Lucresse (Lucretia); and Innocent III (Pope) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023).
2022:
"Rereading Black Like Me: Speech Matters, Context Matters," in New Directions in the Ethics and Politics of Speech, ed. J. P. Messina (NY: Routledge, 2022), 91-109.
Review of Holly Lawford-Smith, Gender-Critical Feminism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), for Society 59.5 (2022): 599-603, open access https://rdcu.be/csSZIG.
2021:
"Katharine Lee Bates and Chaucer's American Children," The Chaucer Review 56 (2021): 95-118.
2019:
"'The Man within the Breast' and the Kingdom of Apollo," Society 56.6 (2019): 550-554.
Review of John Bugbee, God's Patients: Chaucer, Agency, and the Nature of Laws (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), for Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 345-349.
2018:
"Why I Support the Freedom Project," The Wellesley News Feb. 28, 2018: https://thewellesleynews.com/2018/02/28/why-i-support-the-freedom-project-professor-of-english-kathryn-lynch/.
Review of John M. Hill, Chaucer's Neoplatonism: Varieties of Love, Friendship, and Community (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), in Medieval Review: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/25767.
2016:
Review of Carolyn P. Collette, Rethinking Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (York: York Medieval Press, 2014), in Speculum 91 (2016): 480-82.
Review of Tison Pugh, Chaucer's (Anti-) Eroticisms and the Queer Middle Ages (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014), in Arthuriana 26.2 (2016): 148-49.
"Idols of the Marketplace: Chaucer/Pasolini," in Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales, ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2016), 130-48.
2015:
"Do We Still Need Tenure? Yes, but Bring on Reform,"The Boston Globe. Online Dec. 1, 2015: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/12/01/still-need-tenure-yes-but-bring-reform/F9LB46Q7zRwDuqMYhUzr3M/story.html. Print edition: A17.
"Cutting the Liberal Arts Undermines Our Cultural Traditions," The Washington Post. Online June 19, 2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cutting-the-liberal-arts-undermines-our-cultural-traditions/2015/06/19/2eb18eee-15f6-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html?utm_term=.e15fa695ade2. Print edition: A14.
2014:
with Mary Lefkowitz, "Emeriti Faculty as a Valuable Institutional Resource," Faculty Retirement: Best Practices for Navigating the Transition, ed. Claire Van Ummersen, Jean McLaughlin, and Lauren Duranleau (Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2014), 119-28.
"Reading Food in the Canterbury Tales," Approaches to Teaching the Canterbury Tales, ed. Peter Travis and Frank Grady (New York: MLA, 2014): 139-44.
"Chaucer's Insatiable Wives: Women Eating Men and the Romantic Turn in the Canterbury Tales," Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering, ed. John Hill, Robert Yeager, and Bonnie Wheeler (University of Toronto Press, 2014). 115-28.
2013:
Review of Linda Tarte Holley, Reason and Imagination in Chaucer, the Perle-Poet, and the Cloud-Author: Seeing from the Center (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), in Speculum 88.1 (2013): 312-13.
2011:
"'Diverstieee bitwene hir bothe lawes': Chaucer's Unlikely Alliance of a Lawyer and a Merchant," The Chaucer Review 46 (2011): 74-92; reprinted in Chaucer, Langland, and Company: Studies in Middle English Literature in Honor of C. David Benson, ed. Daniel Donoghue, Susanna Fein, David Raybin, James Simpson, and Nicholas Watson (2011).
2010:
"Robert Henryson's 'Doolie Dreame' and the Late Medieval Dream Vision Tradition," JEGP 109 (2010): 177-97.
2009:
Review of T. E. Hill, "She, This in Blak": Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (New York: Routledge, 2006), for Speculum 84 (2009): 731-33.
2008:
Review of Susan Schibanoff, Chaucer's Queer Poetics: Rereading the Dream Trio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), for Studies in the Age of Chaucer 30 (2008): 399-402.
2007:
"Dating Chaucer," The Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 1-22.
Review of Keiko Hamaguchi, Non-European Women in Chaucer: A Postcolonial Study (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), for Speculum 83 (2008): 706-08.
2006:
Review of Joanna Summers, Late-Medieval Prison Writing and the Politics of Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), for Speculum 81 (2006): 608-09.
"From Tavern to Pie Shop: The Raw, the Cooked, and the Rotten in Fragment I of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," Exemplaria 19.1 (2007): 117-38.
2005:
"Voting One's Conscience: What It Means and What It Doesn't," Society 42 (May/June, 2005): 27-29.
Review of Dana M. Symons, ed. Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2004), for The Medieval Review: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/15952.
"Laura Hibbard Loomis: Mrs. Arthur," Women Medievalists in the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 239-54.
"The Three Noble Kinsmen," Images of Matter: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 72-91.
2004:
Review of Julia Boffey, Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) for Notes and Queries 51 (2004): 435-36.
2003:
with Louise Marlow, "Team Teaching the Literature of the European and Islamic Middle Ages: The European Perspective," Medieval Cultures in Contact, ed. Richard Gyug (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 213-22, 232-46.
Review of Hugh White, Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), for Modern Language Review 98 (2003): 947-48.
2002:
"An Immodest Proposal: Have Children in Graduate School," The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 7, 2002): B5.
2001:
"The Pardoner's Digestion: Eating Images in the Canterbury Tales," in Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve, ed. R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse (Asheville, NC: Pegasus, 2001), 393-409.
Review of Chaucer's Dream Poetry, ed. Helen Phillips and Nick Havely, for Speculum 76 (2001): 410-12.
Review of Iain MacLeod Higgins, Writing East: The "Travels" of Sir John Mandeville for Speculum 76 (2001): 469-71.
1999:
"Diana's 'Bowe Ybroke': Impotence, Desire, and Virginity in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls," in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 83-96.
"Baring Bottom: Shakespeare and the Chaucerian Dream Vision," in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 99-124.
"Storytelling, Exchange, and Constancy: East and West in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," The Chaucer Review, 33 (1999): 409-22.
1998:
Review of Edwin D. Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), for Speculum 74 (1998): 398-400.
1997:
Review of Sheila Delany, The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of CA Press, 1994), for Chaucer Yearbook, 4 (1997): 99-104.
1995:
"The Logic of the Dream Vision in Chaucer's House of Fame," in Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm, ed. Richard J. Utz, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 179-203.
"East Meets West in Chaucer's Squire's and Franklin's Tales," Speculum, 70 (1995): 530-51.
1994:
"Partioned Fictions: The Meaning and Importance of Walls in Chaucer's Poetry," in Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr., ed. Robert R. Edwards (Cambridge: DS Brewer, 1994), 107-125.
Review of Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1992) for Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 16 (1994): 215-19.
1993:
Review of Elaine Tuttle Hansen's Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (University of California Press, 1992), for JEGP 92 (1993): 429-31.
Review of Muriel Whitaker, The Legends of King Arthur in Art (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), for Speculum 68 (1993): 909-10.
1992:
"Implementing an Interdisciplinary Course," in Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, ed. Maureen Fries and Jeanie Watson (New York: Modern Language Assoc.), 65-69.
1991:
Review of Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 1989), for JEGP 90 (1991): 418-20.
1990:
"The Parliament of Fowls and Late Medieval Voluntarism (Parts I & II)," The Chaucer Review 25 (1990): 1-16, 85-95.
Review of Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), for Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 2.1 (1990):136-42.
Review of Judith M. Davidoff, Beginning Well: Framing Fictions in Late Middle English Poetry (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), for Speculum 65 (1990): 643-46.
Review of Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), for Speculum 65 (1990): 1079-81.
1989:
Review of J. Stephen Russell, The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1988), forJEGP 88 (1989): 393-96.
1988:
"`What Hands Are Here?' The Hand as Generative Symbol in Macbeth," Review of English Studies,39 (1988): 29-38.
"Despoiling Griselda: Chaucer's Walter and the Problem of Knowledge in the Clerk's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 41-70.
"The Book of the Duchess as a Philosophical Vision: The Argument of Form," Genre 21, (1988): 279-305.
1982:
"Homer's Iliad and Pope's Vile Forgery," Comparative Literature 34 (1982): 1-15; reprinted in Homer, ed. Katherine Callen King, Classical Heritage Series, Vol. 5 (NY: Garland, 1994), 87-102.
Professional Activities
Founding Member, Academic Freedom Alliance, 2021-.
Editorial Board, Society 2018-.
Selection Panel for NEH Fellowships, Early British Literature, July 2014.
MS Referee for The Chaucer Review, Different Visions, The Journal of Controversial Ideas, Medieval Feminist Forum, Medium Aevum, PMLA, Speculum, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Penn State Univ. Press, University Press of Florida, The Ohio State University Press.
Member of outside review team for English departments at the University of San Francisco (2001), Weston High School (2003), Amherst College (2008), The College of the Holy Cross (2009), and Macalester College (2012).
Selection Committee, John Nicholas Brown prize, Medieval Academy, 2001-04.
NEH Selection Panel for Summer Stipends, 1998, 1999.
Committee for Professional Development, Medieval Academy; travel grant reviewer (ACLS), 1997-2000.
Councillor, Medieval Academy; 1993-96, Executive Committee, Medieval Academy, 1995-96.
Co-chair Program Committee for 1995 Medieval Academy Conference in Boston.
Member of Steering Committee, New England Medieval Conference, 1992-97.
Longstanding membership in the Medieval Academy of America, The Modern Language Association, the New Chaucer Society, the John Gower Society.
Papers Presented and Upcoming
Panelist in Webinar, “Beyond the Ivy League: Women’s Colleges and HxA Values,” September 19, 2024.
"Animals Eating Their Words in Chaucer's Beast Fables," New Chaucer Society Congress, Pasadena, California, July 15, 2024.
Panelist, for "Problems on Campus," "Freedom, Controversy, and Respect," conference at the College of the Holy Cross, April 10, 2023.
Session Chair, for "Hermeneutics," "Illuminated and Unsettled," conference at Harvard University, September 24, 2022.
Participant, "Microaggressions, Questionable Science, and Free Speech," Bipartisan Policy Center, July 7, 2021 (Zoom).
"Rereading Black Like Me: Speech Matters, Context Matters," Workshop on New Approaches to Free Speech, IHS, March 6-7, 2021 (Zoom).
"Reader Friendly Chaucer Editions for an Age of Distraction," for the New Chaucer Society Congress, in Toronto, Canada, July 12, 2018.
Session Organizer, "Revisionary Chronologies and the Chaucer Canon," New Chaucer Society Congress, Siena, Italy, July 15, 2010.
"Chaucer's Insatiable Wives: Women Eating Men and the End of Romance in the Canterbury Tales," 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Congress at Kalamazoo (session sponsored by York University Romance Research Group), 7-10 May 2009.
Panelist in roundtable session, "Post-Riverside Editions, E-Texts, and Digital Resources," 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Congress at Kalamazoo (session sponsored by The Chaucer Review), 7-10 May 2009.
"Dreaming in the Middle Ages," at the College of the Holy Cross, Feb. 28, 2008; again as Wellesley College Reunion Lecture, June 6, 7, 2008.
Session Chair, Bloomfield Conference on "Cultural Reformations," session on "Monasticism," Harvard University, September 10-13, 2008.
"Getting Medieval: What to Do About the Missing Millennium," Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Wellesley College, October 3, 2008; again to Wellesley College Seattle Alumnae Club, Nov. 14, 2008.
"Chaucer in the All-Woman Classroom: Emasculating the Father, Empowering the Mother," for the New Chaucer Society Congress, in New York, July 31, 2006.
Session Chair for "Where the Secular Meets the Sacred II: Sanctuary and the Church," Medieval Academy meeting in Boston, MA, March 31, 2006.
Session Chair, panel on the Book of the Duchess, for the MLA Division on Chaucer, MLA Convention, Philadelphia, December 27, 2006.
"From Tavern to Pie Shop: The Raw and the Rotten in Fragment 1 of the Canterbury Tales," to the annual conference of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, in Tempe, AZ, Feb. 19, 2005; expanded version to the Harvard Doctoral Conference, March 17, 2005.
Session Chair, for the Harvard Conference on Conversion, September 25, 2005.
Session Organizer, for New Chaucer Society Congress, "Inside Chaucer," Glasgow, Scotland, July, 2004.
"Escape to the Middle Ages: Why Tolkien? Why Now?" for the annual conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, October 31, 2003.
"Feast of Fables: Eating and Drinking in the Canterbury Tales," to Harvard Doctoral Conference, November 8, 2001; again at the University of Connecticut, March 15, 2002.
Participant in roundtable discussion of Nancy Drew on "The Connection," WBUR, June 4, 2002.
Session Organizer, for "Shakespeare's Chaucer," New Chaucer Society Congress, Boulder, CO, July 19, 2002.
"'Vitaille at the beste': Eating Well on Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage," 27th Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, New Orleans, LA, Oct. 20, 2001.
"Philosophical and Paradoxical Chaucer," to Harvard Doctoral Conference, March 9, 2000.
"Philosophical Chaucer," to the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, March 31, 2000.
Session Organizer, "Virgins: Mythical, Material, and Metaphorical," New Chaucer Society Congress, Paris, France, July 19, 1998.
"The Virgin Wife of Bath," to the New Chaucer Society Congress, Paris, France, July 19, 1998.
"Team Teaching the Literature of the European and Islamic Middle Ages: The European Perspective," conference on Medieval Cultures in Contact, Fordham University, New York City, March 22, 1997.
"Storytelling Exchange, and Constancy: East and West in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," 31st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 10, 1996.
"Chaucer's Philosophical Vision(s)," to the New Chaucer Society Congress, Los Angeles, California, July 27, 1996.
"Diana's 'Bowe Ybroke': Impotence, Desire, and Virginity in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls," 29th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 8, 1994; again in a longer version at the Harvard Doctoral Conference, Oct. 6, 1994.
"'Soun is Noght but Eyr Ybroken': Truth, Lies, and More Lies in the House of Fame," 20th Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, Sept. 29, 1994.
"East Meets West in the Squire's and Franklin's Tales," Harvard Doctoral Conference, Cambridge, MA, October 7, 1993.
"The Logic of the Dream Vision in Chaucer's House of Fame," Seventh Citadel Conference on Medieval Literature, March 1, 1991, Charleston, SC; again in a longer version at the Harvard Doctoral Conference, March 21, 1991.
"The Meaning and Importance of Chaucer's Walls," to the Harvard Doctoral Conference, April 26, 1990.
"The Book of the Duchess as a Philosophical Vision," 22nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7, 1987.
"Teaching Chaucer's House of Fame in a Course on Visionary Literature," Medieval Association of the Midwest Conference at Cleveland State Univ., October 3, 1987.
"The Parliament of Fowls and Late Medieval Voluntarism," to the Harvard Doctoral Conference, Cambridge, MA, October 21, 1987.
"The Kingis Quair and Literary Parody," 19th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7, 1984.
"John Gower and the Dream-Vision Form," MLA Convention, Los Angeles, CA, Dec. 29, 1982.
"The Itinerary of the Dream-Vision," Davis Medieval Texts and Studies, Conference on "Twelfth-Century Genres," March 7, 1981.
Works in Progress
"The Eaten Word: Food and Drink in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales" (monograph about the role of food in the structure of the Tales).
"The Five Leonas," creative non-fiction.
Death in Plain English, academic murder mystery (completed, unpublished).
Awards
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers (2005-06)
NEH Summer Fellowship (1997)
Pinanski Teaching Prize, Wellesley College (1996)
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers (1987)