The department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGS) is composed of administrators, a Program Advisory Committee (PAC) and Teaching Faculty.

WGS Administrators oversee planning, programming, and day-to-day operations.

The WGS Program Advisory Committee (PAC) is made up of faculty and staff who consult on curricular matters, choose scholarship and award winners, and advise on vision and programming.

The WGS Teaching Faculty includes numerous faculty members (from several colleges at UAH) who teach classes designated as Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies courses.

 

Dr. Joseph Taylor

Associate Professor, English

Contact

1310 Ben Graves Drive
Morton Hall
Room 262
Huntsville, AL 35899
Campus Map

wjt0003@uah.edu

Biography

Joseph Taylor teaches courses in medieval literature, medievalism, history of the English language, and literary theory. His research focuses, specifically, on notions of territory, particularly the relationship between political power and landscape. His work examines medieval regionalisms and nationalisms, evident in his recent book Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages (Cambridge UP, 2022) and medieval environmental consciousness, as illustrated in The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval England (Ohio State UP, 2016). His articles have appeared in Modern Philology, JEGP, and Chaucer Review, among other venues. Currently, he serves as co-editor of the journal Exemplaria: Medieval and Early Modern Theory (Taylor and Francis)

Curriculum Vitae


Education

  • Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin

Expertise

  • Medieval Literature and Culture
  • Old and Middle English
  • History of the English Language

Recent Publications

  • “Medieval Ruin Consciousness: Saint Erkenwald and the Politics of Decay,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 47 (2025) [forthcoming]

  • (Monograph) Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages: Regionalism and Nationalism in Medieval English Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

  • "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land": Loving the Refugee as Neighbor in the Canterbury Tales and Refugee Tales." Exemplaria 32, no. 3 (2020): 248-68.

  • “Quiet Riot: A Politics of Noise in the Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer Review 53, no. 2 (2018): 178-93.

  • “Arthurian Biopolitics: Sovereignty and Ecology in Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 59, no. 2 (2017): 182-208. Winner of the Tony Hilfer Prize for best TSLL essay in 2017

  • (Essay Collection) As co-editor with Randy P. Schiff (SUNY-Buffalo), The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life and Law in Medieval Britain. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016. 303 pages.

  • with Randy P. Schiff, "Introduction: The Politics of Ecology" in The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain. Eds. Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, 1-30. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016.

  • "Sovereign Ecologies: Securing the Royal Flesh in Anglo-Norman Historiography" in The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain. Eds. Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, 179-209. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016.

  • ""Me longeth sore to Bernysdale": Centralization, Resistance and the Bare Life of the Greenwood in A Gest of Robyn Hode," Modern Philology 110, no. 3 (2013): 313-339.

  • "Sovereignty, Oath, and the Profane Life in the Avowing of Arthur," Exemplaria 25, no. 1 (2013): 36-58.