Biographical Statement:
Liz Schirmer teaches and writes about Middle English poetry, gender theory, and border pedagogies. Her current book project, Chaucerian Borderlands, explores the embodiment of teachers in—and teachers of—late-medieval English poetry. She has published widely on late-medieval English literary and religious cultures, with a particular interest in the reform movement known as lollardy. Dr. Schirmer teaches a variety of courses in medieval studies, early English poetry, queer theory, and medieval rhetoric. She has served as Head of the English Department since 2017, after many years as the undergraduate advisor for the English major and minors. Since 2022, she has also been proud to serve as the Head of Gender and Sexuality Studies, now housed in English. In 2024, Dr. Schirmer began a four-year term as the Executive Director of the International Piers Plowman Society.
Education
· PhD in English, University of California, Berkeley, 2001
· A.B. in English and French Literatures, Stanford University, 1993
Research Interests:
· Late medieval English poetry
· Piers Plowman and its histories
· Lollardy and vernacular religious culture
· Gender/queer/trans* theories
· Border pedagogies, late-medieval and 21st c.
Courses Taught:
· ENGL 2630G: Survey of British Literature I (Beowulf through the 18th c.)
· HON 239: Medieval Understandings
· ENGL 4/505: Chaucer (also: Chaucer and Gender; Chaucer and Langland)
· ENGL 525, WS 550: Medieval Women Reading the Bible
· ENGL 4/522, WS 4/550: Dying for Love: Sex and the Spirit in Early English Poetry
· ENGL 4/517: Queer Theory
· ENGL 4/593: Middle English Textual Cultures
· ENGL 5/690: Medieval Rhetoric
Selected Publications:
· Introduction, Piers and Pedagogy (essay cluster, co-ed. with Michael Calabrese), forthcoming in the Yearbook of Langland Studies 38 (2024)
· Borderlands Chaucer, New Chaucer Society: Pedagogy and Profession 2.2 (2022)
· Getzler, A. and E. Schirmer, The Word Project: Teaching Early British Literature Through Language Change, Pedagogy 20.2 (2020), 349-74
· Raschko, M. and E. Schirmer, Introduction and eds., Forms of Faith: Lollardy and Late Medieval Textual Culture (essay cluster), Yearbook of Langland Studies 31 (2017)
· Form and Sign in the Margins: Annotating Oon of Foure, Yearbook of Langland Studies 31 (2017),193-229
· Conversational Lollardy: Key-Object Annotation in MS Bodley 978, Manuscript Studies 2.2 (Fall 2017), 328-368
· Representing Reading in Dives and Pauper, Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception (Brepols 2017), 87-115
· Canon Wars and Outlier Manuscripts: Gospel Harmony in the Lollard Controversy, Huntington Library Quarterly 73 (2010), 1-36
· William Thorpe’s Narrative Theology, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009), 267-99
· ‘Trewe Men’: Pastoral Masculinity in Lollard Polemic, Masculinities and Femininities, (Brepols 2009), 117-30
· Reading Lessons at Syon Abbey: The Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Mandates of Vernacular Theology, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (U of Notre Dame P, 2005), 345-76
Contact: eschirme@nmsu.edu or 575-646-1733
