Elisa M. Narin van Court
Associate Professor of English (Retired)

Department Links:       EnglishJewish Studies
Affiliated Department(s):   Religious Studies , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies


Office: Miller Library 219
Phone: 207-859-5274
Email:

Mailing Address:
5274 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8852

Education

Ph.D. in English, University of California at Berkeley, December 1994.

B.A. in English, magna cum laude with Distinction in General Scholarship, University of California at Berkeley, 1985.

Areas of Expertise:
  • Medieval literature and culture; Jews & anti-Judaisms in Middle English narratives
  • Middle English literature including Chaucer, Langland, & Medieval Romance
  • Medieval Women's Writing
  • George Eliot
Professional Information

Elisa Narin van Court received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in English at the University of California at Berkeley. After teaching at Stanford University for two years as an Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, Narin van Court came to Colby College where she is currently Associate Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies. Narin van Court�s primary area of scholarship and expertise is the representation of Jews and Judaism in late medieval English narratives; her other areas of scholarship and teaching include medieval romance, Chaucer, Piers Plowman, medieval women�s writing, the Arthurian tradition, medieval anti-Judaisms, medieval culture and dissent, George Eliot, and the Bront�s. Narin van Court is currently at work on a book concerned with Jews in medieval narratives, and a new scholarly research project in which she analyses the �public face� (tourist and heritage materials, guide books, memorials, etc.) of medieval Anglo-Jewish history in modern England. Narin van Court is also a published poet and an active environmentalist concerned with wildlife rehabilitation and park development in central Maine.

Other Courses Taught
Course Course Title
EN398 Desire and Autonomy in Medieval Women's Writing
EN152 The Literature of Human Rights
EN311 Cultural Authority and Dissent in Medieval Narratives
EN493 George Elliot Senior Seminar
EN410 The Arthurian Tradition
EN397 Jews in Literature Medieval to Modern
Current Research

�Invisible in Oxford: Medieval Jewish History and Heritage in Modern England.� Two drafts of articles; monograph/book manuscript in progress.

�Cities Under Siege: Staging Ethnicity in Jerusalem and York Narratives.�

�Genre, History, and Narrative Responsibility in Chaucer�s Prioress�s Tale.�

"Feminized Kingship/Feminized Rule: Exemplary Romance and the Appropriation of Monastic Metaphors.

Late Medieval England and the Jews: The Problems of Representation in Middle English Narrative, book manuscript.

Publications

Essays and Articles

"Invisible in Oxford: Medieval Anglo-Jewry in Modern British History," Shofar:An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (Spring 2008).

�Invisible in Oxford: The �Public Face� of Medieval Jewish History in Modern England.� Engage 3 www.engageonline.org.uk/journal (October 2006).

�The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings." In Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, ed. Nicola F. McDonald, University of Manchester Press, 2004.

�The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians,� rev. and rpt. from Chaucer Review. In Chaucer and the Jews, ed. Sheila Delany, Routledge Press, 2002.

�Artful Lines and True: Building Female Community in Christine de Pizan�s Book of the City of Ladies.� Forthcoming in Art and Truth, ed. Noah Charney, Syracuse University Press, 2007.

�Multi-Cultural Kempe: Margery as Jew, or Binary Role-Play in (Auto)- Hagiography.� Under consideration at Medieval Encounters.

"Socially Marginal, Culturally Central: Representing Jews in Medieval English Literature." Exemplaria 12.2 (2000): 293-326. Invited and refereed. Selected to represent the issue on Exemplaria's Website.

"The Hermeneutics of Supersession: The Revision of the Jews from the B to the C-Text in Langland's Piers Plowman." The Yearbook of Langland Studies 10(1996): 43-87.

"The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians: Writing about Jews in Fourteenth Century England." The Chaucer Review 29(1995): 227-48.

"'fiat on . . . flat ofler': Rhetorical Descriptio and Morgan la Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Pacific Coast Philology 23(1988): 60-66.

Reviews

The Judaic Other in Dante, the Gawain Poet, and Chaucer, Catherine S. Cox, University Press of Florida, 2005. The Medieval Review, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/ (Fall 2006).

The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual, Kalman P. Bland, Princeton University Press, 2000. The Medieval Review, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/ (Spring 2002).

Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, Miri Rubin, Yale University Press, 1999. Criticism 42, No. 2 (Spring 2000).

The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England, Andrew P. Scheil, University of Michigan Press, 2004. Forthcoming in the Association for Jewish Studies Review, 2006.

Medieval Encyclopedia Entries

  • The Alliterative Morte Arthur
  • William of Palerne
  • The Siege of Jerusalem
  • Yvain
  • Clig�s
  • Eric and Enide
  • Lancelot
  • Ywain and Gawain
  • Havelok
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • Margery Kempe
  • Christine de Pizan
(Facts on File Medieval Encyclopedia, 2005)

Reader/Referee for Exemplaria, Chaucer Review, Studies in the Age of Chaucer.

Poetry

�Tomorrow, Ice Skating,� Animus 13 (Summer/Fall 2004).

�Into the Light,� Off the Coast, (September 2004).

�Concerto for Strings,� �Supper at Emmaus,� BlackWater Review (2002)

"White,� Appalachia (December 2001)

"Wonder," "Essentials," Northeast, Series VI, Number 7 (January 2001)

"Lingua Franca," "Night Vision," Animus, 4(Autumn 2000)

Big Bang of Bards, CD of Portland Poets (released June 2000)

"The Way of the World," The Comstock Review Vol. 14, no.1 (May 2000)

"Public Acts," American Poets and Poetry (May-June 2000)

"Winter-Sight," "Kiting," "Erosion Control," Animus, 3 (Spring 2000)

"Field Stone," The Larcom Review, no. 2 (Winter 1999-2000)

"A Small Nurture," Potpourri, Vol.11, no.4 (Winter 1999)

"Resurrection at Traitor's Gate," Potato Eyes, no. 20-21 (Fall 1999/Winter 2000)

"Footprints in Snow," Puckerbrush Review, XVIII, i (Summer/Fall 1999)

"Ethiopia, 1965," reprinted in ABBEY (July 1999)

"Bad Daddies," Clark Street Review, no. 5 (May 1999)

"A Thin Kind of Blue," American Poets and Poetry, vol. 3, no. 5 (May-June 1999)

"Wind-Master"; "Ethiopia, 1965." The Caf� Review 10 (Spring 1999)

Readings

Oak Street Theatre (1999, 2000, 2001) Maine Arts Festival (2000, 2001) Portland Cultural Centre (2002)

Poems

A Small Nurture

for Peter Harris and Lisa Rosen

The dog died
And I have no children.
I bring cookies to the seminar
And garner the scorn of female colleagues--
Do you think the guys do this?
I don't know
But what I really mean
Is I don't care what the guys do
Or don't.
I have inconvenient responses
To what life gives me or withholds.
My students,
Sometime irritants,
Easily become my children
And each May's loss
A keen, wailful good-bye.
There is a disease
Where the body becomes
Hyper-aware of its own processes,
And in this heightened state
Every heart-beat, and pulse, and nerve
Fractures the balance of sanity.
I used to think I could feel
Every birth and death and fall
Of every body.
Overcome, I would fixate on one moment:
Right now there is a woman dying in India
A child falling
Another woman giving painful birth
A man being shot
Another whose heart has stopped . . .
And this would go on
And on
Until I crawled outside myself.
Does every body do this?

CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS

"The Liminal Natural World and the Social Body in Arthurian Literature." To be presented at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, England, July 2008.

�Tikkun Olam: Public History and Public Memory in Interfaith Understanding.� Presented at Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln, England, June 2007. Invited.

�Nature and the Social Body in the Arthurian Tradition.� Presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI., May 2007.

�Invisible in Oxford: History, Memory, and Medieval Anglo-Jewry in Modern England.� Colby Hillel Family Weekend Brunch, October 8, 2006.

�Invisible in Oxford: The �Public� Face of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History in Modern England.� Presented at the New England Medieval Conference, September 16, 2006, Bates College, Maine.

�Nature and the Arthurian Tradition.� Presented at the Humboldt Research Institute, Steuben, Maine, August 2006. Invited.

�Invisible in Oxford: Medieval Anglo-Jewish History in Modern England.� Presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI., May 2006.

�Invisible in Oxford: The �Public Face� of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History in Modern England.� Presented at the Western Jewish Studies Conference, Long Beach, CA., March 2006.

�Chaucer and Cosmology: Cosmic Humanism in Chaucerian Narratives.� Colby Alumni College, July 24-27, 2005.

�Multi-Cultural Kempe: Margery as Jew, or Binary Role-Play in (Auto)-Hagiography.� Presented at the Medieval Academy of America Conference, Miami, Florida, March 2005.

�Kempe as Jew, or Binary Self-Fashioning in (Auto)-Hagiography.� Presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2004.

�The Church, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism: Reflections on The Passion of the Christ.� Annual Berger Lecture. Presenter and Discussant, April 2004.

Guest Lecture at Dartmouth College. Departments of English and Jewish Studies. January 2003.

�The Exemplary Jew, the Badge of Shame, and the Problem of Representation in Middle English Narrative.� Presented at the Twenty-Second Medieval Forum, Plymouth State College, New Hampshire, April 2001.

"The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings." Presented at the 35th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2000. Invited.

"Cities under Siege: Staging Ethnicity in Jerusalem and York Narratives." Presented at the Modern Language Association Convention, San Francisco, December 1998.

"Feminized Kingship/Feminized Rule: Exemplary Romance and the Appropriation of Maternal Metaphors." Presented at the New England Medieval Conference, Portland, Maine, October 1998.

"The Exemplary Jew, the Badge of Shame, and the Problem of Representation in Middle English Literature." Presented at the 33rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1998.

"Maternal Embrace/Political Union: The Gendered Construction of Exemplary Rule in Havelok and William of Palerne." Presented at the Mid-America Medieval Association, Lawrence, Kansas, February 1998.

"Erotic Embrace/Political Union: The Gendered Construction of Exemplary Rule in Havelok and William of Palerne." Presented to the Colby's Women's Studies Colloquium, April 17, 1997.

"The Hermeneutics of Medieval Anti-Judaisms." Presented at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference, Tempe, Arizona, February 1996.

"Erotic Embrace/Political Union: Exemplary Rule in Havelok and William of Palerne." Presented at the Medieval Association of the Pacific Conference, San Diego, California, March 1996.

"The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians: Writing about Jews in Fourteenth Century England." Presented at the New Chaucer Society International Congress, Seattle, Washington, 1992.

�Reading Jews in The Siege of Jerusalem.� Presented at Berkeley Medieval Colloquium, University of California at Berkeley, 1991.

"Chaucer's Knight's Tale: 'the toils endured for Mars.'" Presented at the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast conference, Portland, Oregon, 1988.

"The Rhetorical Revision of the Jews from the B to the C-Text in Langland's Piers Plowman." Presented at the Medieval Association of the Midwest, Cleveland, Ohio, 1988.

"fiat on . . . flat ofler': Rhetorical Descriptio and Morgan la Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Presented at the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast Conference, Davis, California, 1987.

Honors and Awards

Humanities Research and Travel Grant, Colby College, 2007.

Humanities Travel Grant, Colby College, 2007.

Humanities Research and Travel Grant, Colby College, 2006.

Bronstein Grant for Jewish Studies, 2005.

Humanities Research and Travel Grant, Colby College, 2005.

Who�s Who in Humanities Higher Education, 2005.

Who�s Who Among America�s Teachers, 2005.

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at Oxford: Representations of the �Other�: Jews in Medieval Christendom; Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 2003.

Humanities Research and Travel Grant, Colby College, 2003.

Bronstein Grant for Jewish Studies, 2003.

Humanities Research and Travel Grant, Colby College, 1999.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Stanford University, 1994-96.

Charlotte Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 1993-94.

Maude Fife Memorial Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1993-94 (declined).

Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1993-94 (declined).

National Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellowship, 1993-94 (declined).

Nominated to the Harvard Society of Fellows, 1993.

Maude Fife Memorial Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1992-93.

Newhouse Foundation Fellowship, 1992-93.

Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, 1992.