Frank Grady

Education

PhD, University of California, Berkeley
BA, Harvard University

About

Frank Grady teaches courses in medieval literature, literary theory, and film. He has written widely on Chaucer and his contemporaries, and he served as editor of the annual  Studies in the Age of Chaucer from 2002-2007. His book  Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England (2005) explores how medieval writers used the figure of the virtuous pagan to confront a variety of historical, cultural, and formal literary issues.  His edited collections include Answerable Style: Form and History in Medieval English Literature (2013; co-edited with Andrew Galloway), the second edition of the MLA's  Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (2014; with Peter Travis), and The Cambridge Companion to the Canterbury Tales (2020).

He served as Chair of English from 2014-2022 and as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2022-23.

Current projects include more work on  Piers Plowman and a study of literate practices in fifteenth-century England. When not in the office, he can be found cooking, fishing, birding, streaming sci-fi series, raising monarch butterflies, and playing keyboards in his Steely Dan tribute band, the Luckless Pedestrians.*

            * note: one of these things is not actually true.

Frequently Taught Courses

ENGL 3310 - English Literature Before 1790
ENGL 4270 - Medieval English Literature
ENGL 4260 - Chaucer
ENGL 4950 - Cool Old Movies
ENGL 5250 - Studies in Middle English Literature
ENGL 5950 - Studios and Stars/American Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s

Publications

“The Year of Living Decanally, or Non-Regular Research,” New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 5 (2024): 69–78.

“Moral Chaucer,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Canterbury Tales, ed. Grady, below (2020): 205-217.

Editor, The Cambridge Companion to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

“Chaucer’s Langland’s Boethius,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 271-87.

“Hunting and fortune in the Book of the Duchess and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries: Essays for Stephanie Trigg , ed. Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 109-124.      

Editor, with Peter Travis, Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , Second Edition (New York: Modern Language Association, 2014)

“Seigneurial Poetics, or The Poacher, the Prikasour , the Hunt and Its Oeuvre,” 195-213 in Answerable Style , ed. Grady and Galloway, below (2013).

Editor, with Andrew Galloway, Answerable Style: Form and History in Medieval English Literature (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2013)

“Looking Awry at St. Erkenwald ,” Exemplaria 23.2 (Summer 2011): 105-25.

Editor, Studies in the Age of Chaucer , vols. 25 (2003) – 29 (2007)

Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England , (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2005)

Preface to The Canterbury Tales: A Selection , ed. Donald Howard (Signet Classics, 2005)

“Contextualizing Alexander and Dindimus ,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 18 (2004): 81-106.

“Arnoldian Humanism, or Amnesia and Autobiography in the Schwarzenegger Action Film,” Cinema Journal 42 (Winter 2003): 41-56. [available through Project Muse]

"Gower's Boat, Richard's Barge, and the True Story of the Confessio Amantis : Text and Gloss," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44:1(Spring 2002): 1-15. [available through Project Muse]

"The Generation of 1399," in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England , edited by Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington (Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 202-29.

" St. Erkenwald and the Merciless Parliament,"  Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000):179-211.

"The Boethian Reader of Troilus and Criseyde ," The Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 230-251.

"Vampire Culture," in Monster Theory: Reading Culture , ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (University of Minnesota Press, 1996): 225-41.

"Chaucer Reading Langland: The House of Fame ," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 18 (1996): 3-23.

" Machomete and Mandeville's Travels ," in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam , ed. John Tolan (Garland Publishing, 1996): 271-88. Reprinted by Routledge, 2000.

"The Lancastrian Gower and the Limits of Exemplarity," Speculum 70 (1995): 552-75. [available through JSTOR]

" Piers Plowman , St. Erkenwald , and the Rule of Exceptional Salvations," The Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992): 61-86.

Conference Papers/Invited Lectures

“What the Archive Brings to Life,” Forty-Ninth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, April 5-6, 2024

“Chaucer’s Langland’s Boethius,” New Chaucer Society Congress, London, England, July 10-14, 2016

“Hapax Langlandia,” Sixth International Piers Plowman Conference, Seattle, WA, July 23-26, 2015

“Petrarch in Yorkshire, c. 1437,” Carleton College, April 13, 2015

“How to Do Wills with Things,” New Chaucer Society Congress, Reykjavik, Iceland, July 15-19, 2014

“Langland and Genre: Five Questions,” 48th International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-12, 2013

“Hunting and Fortune in the Book of the Duchess and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” New Chaucer Society Congress, Portland, OR, July 23-26, 2012

“Petrarch in Yorkshire,” Medieval Clerical Culture Reading Group, Center for the Humanities, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, April 13, 2012

“Langland’s ‘Love-Dreem,’” Fifth International Piers Plowman Conference, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, April 14-17, 2011

“Petrarch in Yorkshire, or, Literacy, Piety, Charity, Family, History, Law, Romance, Politics, Penitence, Theology, Humanism, and the Fifteenth-Century Urban Gentry,” 44th International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 2009

“Teaching The General Prologue/ The Knight’s Tale,” two workshops at the Nineteenth Annual Literature Conference for Teachers and Lovers of Good Books, Eastern Illinois University, October 23-24, 2008

“Seigneurial Poetics, or The Poacher, the Prikasour, the Hunt and Its Oeuvre,” The State of the Literary: Form After Historicism, A Conference in Honor of Anne Middleton, University of California- Berkeley, April 19, 2008

"Hard-boiled Hagiography, or, Looking Awry at St. Erkenwald ," New Chaucer Society Congress, New York City, July 27-31, 2006.

“Comstock’s Chaucer,” Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, DC, December 27-30, 2005

“Venery, Tragedy, and Translation, or, Are the Nine Worthies really just a bunch of Nimrods?”, University of Notre Dame, December 1, 2005

“How to Recognize a Virtuous Pagan When You See One,” University of California, Irvine, November 17, 2004; University of Texas, Austin, February 11, 2005; University of Missouri, Columbia, October 21, 2005

“The Salvation of the Heathen: Some Strategies for Getting Away with It,” Washington and Lee University, May 17, 2004

"The Trouble with Trajan," Third International Piers Plowman Conference, University of Birmingham, July 9-12, 2003

"Piers Plowman and Alexander and Dindimus ???" 38th International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 8-11, 2003

"City, Scribe and Patron in Fifteenth-Century London: The Case of Richard Frampton," 29 ^th Annual St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, St. Louis University, October 11-12, 2002

“City, Scribe and Patron, or, Frampton Comes Alive,” Modern Language Association Convention, New Orleans, LA, December 27-30, 2001

“Start the Revolution Without Me: Violence, Politics, and the New Hollywood Epic,” Violence, Cinema, and American Culture Conference, Center for the Humanities, University of Missouri-St. Louis, April 6-7, 2001

"Textual Poaching in The Parlement of the Thre Ages ," Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 2000

"'You Can't Handle the Truth': Mum and the Sothsegger in the Reign of Henry IV," 35th International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 4-7, 2000

"Arnoldian Humanism: Allegory, Apparatus, and Autobiography in the Action Film," University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, October 13, 1998 

"’Exclusive of Chaucer’: Curricular Animadversions," Biennial Conference of the New Chaucer Society, University of Paris-Sorbonne, July 17-21, 1998

"Predestination, Foreknowledge, and the Boethian Reader of Troilus and Criseyde," Fifth International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 13-16, 1998

"The Generation of 1399," 33rd International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 1998

"The Lancastrian Usurpation of Ricardian Poetry," 32nd International Conference on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 8-11, 1997

"Ricardian Justice in St. Erkenwald ," Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 1996

"Miracles Are Politics by Other Means: St. Erkenwald and the Merciless Parliament," 31st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-12, 1996

"Sympathy for the Vampire? From Dracula to The Vampire Lestat ," Monday Noon Series Lecture, Center for the Humanities, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, April 22, 1996

"Arnoldian Humanism: Action, Allegory and Amnesia from Total Recall to True Lies," Mid-America American Studies Association, St. Louis, MO, April 19-20, 1996

"Bourgeois Long-Windedness: A Marxist Critique" ("How to Stop a Long-Winded Speaker: A Metapanel"), Modern Language Association Convention, San Diego, CA, December 27-30, 1994

" Dracula on the Border," Davidson College, Davidson, NC, October 31, 1994

"The Vampire as Culture," Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, Minneapolis, MN, November 4-6, 1993

"Gower's Alexander and the Limits of Exemplarity," 28th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 6-9, 1993

"The Man of Law's Tale and the Chaucerian Critique of Romance," University of Missouri-St. Louis English Department Colloquium, April 20, 1993

"Chaucer Reading Langland: The House of Fame," Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, December 27-30, 1992

" St. Erkenwald and the Rule of Exceptional Salvations," Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, St. Louis, MO, November 5-7, 1992

"Gender, Genre, and the Sense of an Ending in the Man of Law's Tale," "The Roles of Women in the Middle Ages: A Reassessment" Conference, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton, NY, October 15-17, 1992

"Readers and Writers, Cloister and Court, Alexander and Dindimus ," Medieval Association of the Midwest Conference, Warrensburg, MO, September 20-21, 1991

"' Machomete' and Mandeville's Travels" the 26th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-12, 1991

"Nature and Society, Cloister and Court, Alexander and Dindimus ," Medieval Association of the Pacific Conference, Davis, CA, March 1-3, 1991

"Composition and the Study of Popular Culture," (with Terry Mulcaire) Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL, March 22-24, 1990