Anthony Adams (B.A. Wesleyan; M.A., Ph.D. Toronto) is Visiting Assistant Professor of English, specializing in medieval languages and literatures. He is working on his first book which examines sacrifice and violence in Middle English poetry. His past courses have examined outlaws, violence and sacrifice, trauma theory, memory studies, animality, history of the English language, the Otherworld, Old and Middle English, Old Norse, Old Irish, Middle Welsh, Medieval Latin, and horror fiction. Other interests of his include poetic difficulty, literary games and follies, cultural studies, aesthetics, and holidays. He has written on Old English and Carolingian poetry of war, Medieval Latin, Thomas Malory, the Middle English Charlemagne romances, Norse sagas, Chaucer, and Beowulf, and published (with A.G. Rigg) the first complete English translation and commentary of the ninth-century epic Latin poem Bella Parisiacae urbis in the Journal for Medieval Latin.
Other Courses Taught
Course
Course Title
EN492A
Medieval Latin
Current Research
The Succor of Horror: Sacrifice, Trauma, and Narrative in the Middle Ages
Discors machina: Epic and Sacrifice in Anglo-Carolingian Poetry of War
The Traumatic Landscape of Memory in Pearl
Building, Dwelling, Hovering, Recovering: Medieval Landscapes in Geoffrey Hill, Basil Bunting, and John Montague
Beowulf, Bullfighting, and Samurai Cinema
Publications
Forthcoming work
‘Chivalric Quest: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, forthcoming in The Hero’s Quest, ed. Bernard Schweizer, EBSCO Critical Insights (Salem Press, 2012)
There’s No Hideousness like Show Hideousness: Why Attempts at Fidelity have Ruined Beowulf’, forthcoming in BADapatations, ed. I.Q. Hunter and Constantine Ververis
‘“He took a stone awayâ€: Castration and Cruelty in Sturlunga saga’, forthcoming in Historia Calamitatum: Castration and Culture from Antiquity through the Early Modern Era, ed. Larissa Tracy (Boydell & Brewer, 2012)
‘An Immensity of Bitter Air: Fate and the North in Haggard’s Medieval Novels’, forthcoming in ,Reappraising Rider Haggard, ed. John Miller (2012)
The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Special Centenary Issue: Flann O’Brien, guest editors Neil Murphy & Keith Hopper, XXXI (Fall 2011) 'Butter-Spades, Footnotes, and Omnium: The Third Policeman as Pataphysical Fiction'
Recent Talks
The Architecture of Immolation: Beowulf, Heorot, and Sacrificial Space
Horror in the Classroom: Some Insights and Lessons from Teaching a Course on Horror Fiction
Discors machina: Trauma, Grotesquerie, and Chaos in Medieval Literature of War
Gazing at Calamity: Wounds, Words, and Things in the Middle Ages Torn Testimony: Speaking and Dwelling in the Old English “Book†Riddles
‘Literary Games, Nonsense, and Follies’, invited speaker, Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society, Brown University, April 8 2011
Session moderator, ‘Landscape through Texts and Readers: Liminal Spaces’, New England Medieval Studies Graduate Colloquium, March 5 2011
‘The Succor of Horror: Finding Pleasure in Pain in the Middle Ages’, Invited conference speaker, Dancing with Death: Warfare, Wounds, and Disease in the Middle Ages, California University of Pennsylvania, October 2010
‘The Scars that Won’t Heal Your Eyes: Scapegoat and Sacrifice in the Old English Daniel’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
Session organizer, ‘Medieval Automata and Simulacra: From the Hydraulic to the Daemonic’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
Session presider, ‘Crossing Borders: Hybridity and Hegemony in Post-Conquest England’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
The Architecture of Immolation: Beowulf, Heorot, and Sacrificial Space
Horror in the Classroom: Some Insights and Lessons from Teaching a Course on Horror Fiction
Discors machina: Trauma, Grotesquerie, and Chaos in Medieval Literature of War
Gazing at Calamity: Wounds, Words, and Things in the Middle Ages Torn Testimony: Speaking and Dwelling in the Old English “Book†Riddles
‘Literary Games, Nonsense, and Follies’, invited speaker, Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society, Brown University, April 8 2011
Session moderator, ‘Landscape through Texts and Readers: Liminal Spaces’, New England Medieval Studies Graduate Colloquium, March 5 2011
‘The Succor of Horror: Finding Pleasure in Pain in the Middle Ages’, Invited conference speaker, Dancing with Death: Warfare, Wounds, and Disease in the Middle Ages, California University of Pennsylvania, October 2010
‘The Scars that Won’t Heal Your Eyes: Scapegoat and Sacrifice in the Old English Daniel’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
Session organizer, ‘Medieval Automata and Simulacra: From the Hydraulic to the Daemonic’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
Session presider, ‘Crossing Borders: Hybridity and Hegemony in Post-Conquest England’, 45th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2010
