Curtis Gruenler

Dept. of English

Hope College

PO Box 9000

Holland, MI 49422-9000

(616) 395-7996

gruenler@hope.edu

 

Associate Professor, Hope College, Department of English, 1997–present

Education

University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D., English literature, 1998

Dissertation: “Piers Plowman and the Medieval Uses of Enigma”

Directors: V. A. Kolve and H. A. Kelly

Stanford University, B.A. with distinction, English literature, 1985

Academic Honors

Sluyter Fellowship, Hope College, 2000-1

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, The Huntington Library, Summer 1999

Hope College Faculty Development Grants, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 1996–7

Lynn White, Jr., Fellowship, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1996–7

Friends of English, Daniel G. Calder Memorial Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA, 1995–6

Collegium of University Teaching Fellows, UCLA, 1995–6

University Fellowship, UCLA, 1990–1

Publications

“Dante’s Quest for Home.” Christianity and the Arts 7.1 (Winter 2000): 6-9.

“Desire, Violence, and the Passion in Fragment VII of The Canterbury Tales: A Girardian Reading.” Renascence: A Journal of Values in Literature 52.1 (Fall 1999): 35-56.

Review of Eleanor Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature in Christianity and Literature, forthcoming.

Review of Carolyn P. Collette, Species, Phantasms, and Images: Vision and Medieval Psychology in The Canterbury Tales in Quidditas, forthcoming.

Review of Joan M. Nuth, God’s Lovers in an Age of Anxiety: The Medieval English Mystics in Reformed Review, Autumn 2002.

Review of Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 26 (1995): 118-124.

Encyclopedia entries: “Seint Denys,” “Via Appia,” “Walakye,” “Ware,” “Watlynge Strete,” “Wyndesore.” The Chaucer Encyclopedia. Ed. Paul Ruggiers. University of Oklahoma Press, forthcoming.

Inivited Lectures

“The Tearing of the Pardon and the Poetics of Piers Plowman,” University of Texas at Austin, May 2, 2005.

Conference Presentations

The Medieval Poetics of Enigma and Christian Imagination,” The World and Christian Imagination, Baylor University, November, 2006

Girardian Themes in Arthurian Literature,” 41st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2006.

“Wendell Berry, Marilynne Robinson, and the Refiguring of Reality,” Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, April 2006.

“Medieval Philology Meets Modern Linguistics in the Oxford Inklings,” 18th International Conference on Medievalism, St. Louis University, October 2003.

 “The Enigmatic Mode in Pseudo-Dionysius, The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich,” 36th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2001.

“The Uses of Enigma in Middle English Lyrics: From Reading Right to Making Meaning,” 35th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2000.

 “Culture out of Noise: The House of Fame and Cybernetics,” Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium, March 2000.

Response to “Langland’s Syncategoremic Imagination” by Christopher Cannon, Second International Langland Conference, Asheville, North Carolina, July 1999.

“Enigmatic Discourse in the Banquet Scene of Piers Plowman,” International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 1999.

“‘Til I have Piers the Plowman’: Langland’s Enigmatic Apocalypticism,” Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium, March 1999.

“Owen Barfield: Prophet of Postmodernism?” C. S. Lewis Centenary Celebration, Wheaton College, July 1998.

“Fragment VII of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Violence, and the Theory of René Girard.” Annual meeting of the western section of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Santa Clara University, May 1998.

“Augustine’s Hermeneutics of Enigma and the Historical Criticism of Medieval Literature.” The annual meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, Honolulu, March 1997.

“The Poetics of Chaos: Emergent Systems in Two Medieval Allegories.” The annual conference of the Society for Literature and Science, New Orleans, Nov. 1994.

“‘As myself in a mirour’: Self-interpretation in Piers Plowman.” Glossed by Another Text: English Literature and the Bible, Princeton University, August 1994.

Teaching Experience

Hope College, Department of English, 1997–present

Expository Writing I (topic: Technology and Society)

The History of the English Language

Literature in English to 1775

Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Arthurian Literature

Christianity and Literature (interdisciplinary senior seminar)

Theology and Literary Theory

World Literature I: Ancient to Renaissance

First-Year Seminar

Cultural Heritage I: Antiquity to 1500

Introduction to Literature

Department Practicum Seminar

University of California, Los Angeles, Department of English, 1991–1995

Composition and Rhetoric

Critical Reading and Writing

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (assistant)

English Literature 800–1660 (assistant)

English Literature 1660–1832 (assistant)

Shakespeare for non-majors (assistant)

Stanford University

Department of Computer Science, teaching assistant, 1984

Center for Teaching and Learning, volunteer tutor, 1982–1985

Editing

Editor. Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Volume 25 (1994).

Managing Editor. Modern Liturgy. Resource Publications, San Jose, California. 1986–1990.

Professional Memberships

Medieval Academy of America

New Chaucer Society

Colloquium on Religion and Violence

Conference on Christianity and Literature