Karla Taylor
Department of English
University of Michigan
3220 Angell Hall
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
(734)764-6363 (office)
(734)668-6877 (home)
e-mail: kttaylor@umich.edu
Education
1983 Ph.D., Stanford University, Department of English. Dissertation: “Chaucer Reads the Divine Comedy.”
1978-79 Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven, Belgium. Postgraduate work in Germanic philology.
1975 A.B., Indiana University, English and Germanic Languages and Literatures, with highest distinction and departmental honors.
Honors and Awards
2001 English Department nomination, D’Arms Award for Disinguished Graduate Mentoring
2001 Michigan Humanities Award, Winter 2001
1999 LSA Excellence in Education Award, University of Michigan
1994 Center for Research in Learning and Teaching Grant,
to develop audio materials for teaching Middle English, University of Michigan
1992 LSA Excellence in Education Award, University of Michigan
1988 Frederick W. Hilles Publication Award, for Chaucer Reads the “Divine Comedy”
1985-86 Morse Fellowship, Yale University
1980-81 Whiting Fellowship, Stanford University
1978-79 Belgian-American Education Foundation Fellowship, Leuven, Belgium
1975 Phi Beta Kappa
Employment
2004- Director, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Michigan
1989- Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan
1983-89 Assistant Professor, Department of English, Yale University
1981-83 Lecturer, Department of English, Yale University
Service
2004- Director, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Michigan
2004-5 Placement Officer, Department of English, University of Michigan
2004 Executive Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan (Winter)
2002 Director, Third-Term Reviews for PhD students, Department of English, University of Michigan (Fall)
2002-3 Five-Year Plan Subcommittee, Intellectual Profile of the Faculty, Department of English, University of Michigan
2001 Director, Third-Term Reviews for PhD students, Department of English, University of Michigan (Fall)
2000 Director, Third-Term Reviews for PhD students, Department of English, University of Michigan (Fall)
2000-1 Search Committee (medieval), Department of English
1999-2000 Undergraduate Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan
1999-2000 Awards and Prizes Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan
1999-2000 Graduate Admissions Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan
1999-2000 Tenure Review Committee, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
1998-2001 Senate Assembly, LSA representative, University of Michigan
1998-9 Faculty Representative, GEO Negotiating Team, University of Michigan
1998-9 Search Committee (medieval), Department of English
1998-9 Faculty Review Committee, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
1997-9 Search Committee (French medieval), Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
1997-8 Director, Third-Term Reviews for PhD students, Department of English, University of Michigan
1997-8 Graduate Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan
1995-6 Presidential Taskforce for the Recruitment and Retention of the Exceptional, University of Michigan
1995-6 Faculty Representative, GEO Negotiating Team, University of Michigan
1995-6 Graduate Committee, Department of English, University of Michigan
1991-4 Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, University of Michigan
1992 Executive Board, Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan
1991-4 Executive Committee, Department of English
1989-94 Graduate Committee, Department of English
1989-94 Graduate Admissions Committee, Department of English
Publications
Book:
Chaucer Reads the “Divine Comedy” (Stanford University Press, 1989).
Articles and Chapters:
“Proverbs and the Authentication of Convention in Troilus and Criseyde,” in Stephen A. Barney, Ed., Chaucer’s ‘Troilus’: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1980), 277-296.
“A Text and Its Afterlife: Dante and Chaucer,” Comparative Literature 35(1983): 1-20.
“From superbo Ilion to umile Italia: The Acrostic of Paradiso XIX,” Stanford Italian Review 7(1987): 47-66.
“Specular Images: Women and Western European Culture,” Michigan Quarterly Review 30(1991): 221-29.
“Chaucer’s Reticent Merchant,” in The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard, ed. James M. Dean and Christian K. Zacher (University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 189-205.
“Inferno 5 and Troilus and Criseyde Revisited,” in Chaucer’s Troilus: “Subgit be to alle poesye.” Essays in Criticism, ed. R.A. Shoaf. CEMERS (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 239-56.
“Chaucer’s Uncommon Voice: Some Contexts for Influence,” in Leonard M. Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds., Boccaccio and the “Canterbury Tales”: New Essays on an Old Question (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000).
“Italian Renaissance Writers,” in Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Volume 1 (to 1550), ed. Roger Ellis, Chapter C.6. Oxford University Press (in press).
“The French Tradition,” in Tison Pugh and Angela Weisl, eds., Approaches to Teaching Troilus and Criseyde and the Minor Poems (New York: Modern Language Association, 2005 [forthcoming]).
“Social Aesthetics and the Emergence of Civic Discourse in the Shipman’s Tale and the Tale of Melibee,” Chaucer Review 39(2005): 298-322.
Reviews:
Christaan De Jonge, De irenische ecclesiologie van Franciscus Junius, in Renaissance Quarterly 34(1981): 579-81.
James Thomas Chiampi, Shadowy Prefaces: Conversion and Writing in the Divine Comedy, in Renaissance Quarterly 35(1982): 598-601.
Judith Perryman, ed., The King of Tars, ed. from the Auchinleck MS, Advocates 19.2.1, in Speculum 59(1984): 242-43.
Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy, in Renaissance Quarterly 39(1986): 282-84.
Saara Nevanlinna, ed., The Northern Homily Cycle: The Expanded Version in MSS Harley 4196 and Cotton Tiberius E vii, Memoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, Vols. 38, 41, and 43; in Modern Language Review 84(1989): 707-708.
Paul Colilli, Petrarch’s Allegories of Writing, in Renaissance Quarterly, 43(1990): 594-96.
Maria Rosa Menocal, Writing in Dante’s Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio, in Renaissance Quarterly 46(1993): 819-20.
Katherine Heinrichs, The Myths of Love: Classical Lovers in Medieval Literature, in Speculum 68(1993): 1130-32.
Barry Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde. Oxford Guides to Chaucer, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 16(1994): 297-99.
Thomas C. Stillinger, The Song of Troilus: Lyric Authority in the Medieval Book, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97(1998): 110-112.
N.S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love and Ann Astell, Chaucer and the Universe of Learning, in Modern Philology 98(2000):.
Warren Ginsberg, Dante’s Aesthetics of Being, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 22(2000): 493-96.
Robert E. Edwards, Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity, in Medium Ævum 72(2003): 326-27.
Work in Progress:
“’The Noise of Peple’: The Emergence of an English Literary Public, 1350-1420.” Book on creating an English vernacular literary language and audience in the late 14th century; the social imagination of fictions in English; and literary, ethical, and moral justifications of literature. Chapters on scientific and religious writings, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Piers Plowman.
Papers
“Chaucer’s Dido,” delivered at Northwestern University and Cornell University, January 1981.
“Creating a Universe of Discourse,” delivered at Northwest Connecticut State College, October 1982.
“‘Tamen iunget nos littera’: Art and Memory in the Book of the Duchess,” delivered at the 23rd International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1988.
Respondent, plenary session on “Chaucer and Contemporary Theory: Comparative and Continental Models,” New Chaucer Society Congress, Vancouver, B.C., August 1988.
“Chaucer’s Reticent Merchant,” delivered at the University of Michigan, January 1989.
“History, Autobiography, and the Tyranny of Literary Form: The Case of Chaucer’s Monk,” delivered at the Second Michigan State University Chaucer Colloquium, 22 February 1990.
“The Cook’s Flemish Game,” delivered at The New Chaucer Society Congress, Canterbury, U.K., August, 1990.
“Creating a New PhD Program,” MLA, San Francisco, December, 1991.
“Deaf Ears: Dante, Chaucer, and the Problem of Influence,” delivered at the New Chaucer Society Congress, Seattle, August, 1992.
“Forewarned is Forearmed: Creating a PhD Program for the 1990’s,” MLA, New York, December, 1992.
“Save oure tonges difference,” delivered at the In Principio Symposium, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, March, 1994.
“ ‘Daunt in Ingglish’ and Chaucer’s Early Readers,” delivered at the New Chaucer Society Congress, Dublin, Ireland, July, 1994.
“Puns and Doublets: Economy and Plenitude in the Shipman’s Tale and the Melibee,” delivered at the New Chaucer Society Congress, Paris, France, July, 1998.
Presider/Co-organizer, Panel on “Shaping Romance,” 35th International Congress of Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2000.
“ ‘Muses that men clepe Pierides,’ ” delivered at the New Chaucer Society Congress, London, UK, July 2000.
Participant, e-seminar on “Chaucer and Aesthetics,” in conjunction with the New Chaucer Society Congress, London, UK, July 2000.
“ ‘Dante in Ingglish’ and Chaucer’s Early Readers,” presented to the Colloquium for the Study of Law and Society, University of Michigan, November, 2000.
“Reading Faces in Gower’s Republic of Letters,” presented to the Colloquium for the Study of Law and Society, University of Michigan, January 2002
“Chaucer as Sociolinguist,” presented at the New Chaucer Society Congress, Boulder, CO, July 2002.
“Gilbert Banester and the Motives of Translation,” presented at the New Chaucer Society Congress, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, July 2004.
Professional Service
2002-4 Program Committee, New Chaucer Society
1992-4 Nominating Committee, New Chaucer Society
1991-2003 Editorial Board, Figurae series, Stanford University Press
1988- reader for University of California Press, Stanford University Press, University Press of Florida, University of Michigan Press, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Chaucer Review
