Department News
Dr. Megan Murton delivered the inaugural lecture in the School of Philosophy's lecture series commemorating the anniversaries of Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Boethius. Her talk was entitled, "Consolation, Hope, and Prayer: Reading Boethius in Late-Medieval England."
Dr. Megan Murton delivered the annual Drumwright Lecture at the Honors College of Baylor University. Her talk was entitled: "Beyond Consolation: The Virtue of Hope in Boethius and Chaucer."
Dr. Beth Newman Ooi presented a paper titled “Object-Text Connections in Inscriptions on Elite Christian Objects from Early Medieval England” at the Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) in Denver, 16 November 24.
Dr. Lilla Kopár (co-editor) and Dr. Beth Newman Ooi (associate editor), along with two colleagues at Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany), founded a new e-publication for discussion and dissemination of new discoveries and work in early medieval runology and related fields. The inaugural volume of runes:et:al is now available online.
https://edoc.ku.de/id/eprint/33410/1/runes%20et%20al_Vol1_complete_with%20DOIs_12-Jun-24.pdf
Dr. Megan Murton gave an invited lecture in the School of Philosophy's year-long series marking the anniversaries of the deaths of Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Boethius. Her talk, the first of the series, was entitled "Consolation, Hope, and Prayer: Reading Boethius in Late-Medieval England.
Dr. Amanda Auerbach presented a talk "Free Indirect Style as Positive Self-Talk in Jane Austen's Emma" at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism meeting in August 2024. She will present "Aversive Consciousness and Eroticism in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre" at the North American Victorian Studies Association meeting September 13.
Matt Steinhafel (Ph.D. candidate) delivered a paper at the annual conference of the American Literature Association (ALA) in Chicago, IL, in May 2024, on "Ralph Ellison and Twenty-First Century Writers," as part of a panel organized by the Ralph Ellison Society. Also his article, "How Ralph Ellison Integrated T. S. Eliot," was published in the UK-based Journal of the T. S. Eliot Society (2024, pp. 93-132). http://www.tseliotsociety.uk
Dr. Megan Murton was invited to present a lecture entitled "From Consolation to Hope: Boethian and Chaucerian Endings" for the graduate medieval colloquium at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on September 19, 2024.
Dr. Megan Murton (Associate Professor) delivered a paper entitled "Zooming Out: Narrative Occlusion in Chaucer" at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2024. She also served as the invited respondent for a panel on "Christian Subjects in Formation" and co-organized and chaired two panels on Voice and Subjectivity.
Dr. Lilla Kopàr and Dr. Sarah Ferrario (Dept. of Greek and Latin) co-organized a three-day workshop called Really Dead Languages and their Epigraphy (January 25-27, 2024) on ancient languages and epigraphic traditions, showcasing extensive expertise in the field on our campus. As one of nine presenters, Dr. Kopàr gave a talk on runes and runic inscriptions, and Dr. Beth Ooi (Lecturere in English) presented on Old English incscriptions in the roman script. https://greek-latin.catholic.edu/faculty-and-research/research/campus-lectures-and-seminars.html
Dr. S. Beth Newman Ooi (Lecturer in English) presented her work at three conferences in 2023: "For Your Eyes Only: Inscriptions for Private Audiences" as part of the Old English Forum panel at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention in San Francisco, CA, on January 5; "Project Andvari: Creating Digital Access to the Art and Iconography of Early Medieval Northern Europe" co-presented with Dr. Lilla Kopàr and Dr. Nancy Wicker (U. Mississippi) at the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) Anual Meeting in Washington, DC, February 24; and "Textual Adaption Strategies in the Ruthwell Cross Inscriptions" at the 42nd International Conference of the Haskins Society in Richmond, VA, on November 3.
Dr. Kevin Rulo was recently appointed Associate Editor of The T.S. Eliot Studies Annual Journal, published by Clemson UP/Liverpool UP.
Dr. Taryn Okuma organized and moderated a two-part seminar on "Teaching Writing through Literature" for the Association of Literary Critics, Scholars, and Writers conference at Catholic University in October. The seminar included CUA English alumni Christopher Petter (The University of St. Thomas, Houston), Michael (M.I.) Devine (State University of New York at Plattsburgh), Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak (The University of St. Thomas, Houston), and Rebecca Vaccaro (Bishop Ireton High School), as well as current Ph.D. student Marissa Cina.
An essay by Jeremy Specland (Postdoctoral Fellow) entitled "'The Tune Then Used': Psalm Verse Numeration and English Bible Readers" was published in the collection In Readers' Hands: New Perspectives on Premodern Bibles, a volume of Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History (vol. 78, pp. 233-74).
Rachel Daly presented a paper entitled "James Joyce's Ghostly Fathers: Aquinas and Hegel in the 'Scylla and Charybdis' Episode of Ulysses" at the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) annual conference at the Catholic University of America on October 18, 2024.
Dr. Megan Murton was interviewed by the Center for Cultural Engagement as part of a new series introducing university departments to first-generation college students. The interview was edited into two short Instagram videos: Part 1 Part 2.