Karl T. Steel
Professor
English
Location: 2157 Boylan Hall
Phone: 718.951.5000 x3565
Fax: 718.951.4612
Email:
For Karl Steel's CV, see here. Steel's first book is How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages. He co-edited "The Animal Turn," a special issue of postmedieval, a special issue of Glossator on "Pearl", and a special issue on "Fabulous Animals" for Early Modern Culture. Most recently, he has published How Not to make a Human: Pets, Feral children, Worms, Sky Burial, Oysters (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
Education:
Ph.D., Columbia University - 2007 (Literature, Comparative)
M.A., Western Washington University - 1999 (English Literature)
B.A., The Evergreen State College - 1993 (English Literature)
Areas of Expertise:
Medieval literature, intellectual history and social practice; critical animal theory; ecocriticism, posthumanism, and the cultural histories of race and racialization, particularly in relation to the European Middle Ages.
Books and Publications
"The Rules of the Game: Wolf-Hunting and the Usefulness of Knights in Piers Plowman" The Yearbook of Langland Studies 36 (2022): 123-36 (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2023
Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts (D. S. Brewer, 2022), by Liam Lewis, in French Studies 77.2 (2023):
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2023
"Human / Animal" in The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature in a Trans-European Context, ed. Sif Ríkharðsdóttir and Raluca Radulescu (Routledge 2023): 436-44 (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2022
"Posthumanism," entry for The Chaucer Encyclopedia,, forthcoming with Wiley (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2022
Jamie Kreiner, Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West, in American Historical Review 127.1 (2022): 532-33
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2022
Landscape in Middle English Romance: The Medieval Imagination and the Natural World (Cambridge UP 2021), by Andrew M. Richmond, in The Medieval Review
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2022
Whose Middle Ages: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past (Fordham UP, 2019), ed. Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, and Nina Rowe, in Speculum 97.4 (2022): 1148-1150
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2022
"Nothing to Lose: Logsex and Genital Injury in Peter of Cornwall's Book of Revelations" The Body Unbound, ed. Katherine Lu Hsu, Brian P. Sowers, and David Schur (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), 193-214 (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2021
Review of Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed J. Eugene Clay, The Medieval Review, Nov 7 2011 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2021
Review of The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn: Medieval and Twenty-First-Century Perspectives, by Nigel Harris. Arthuriana 31, no. 4 (2021): 108-110. doi:10.1353/art.2021.0037 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2021
Review of Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the Boundary between Humans and Animals, by Ian P. Wei. The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 47, no. 2 (2021): 231-234. muse.jhu.edu/article/798004. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2021
"Posthumanism and the claim to rational action," postmedieval 11.1 (2020): 137-48, book review essay (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2020
"Huntings of the Hare: The Medieval and Early Modern Poetry of Imperiled Animals," Palgrave Handbook of Literary Animal Studies, ed. Susan McHugh, Robert R. McKay, and John Miller (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020):141-52 (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2020
"Beasts, Animals, and Animal Metaphor in Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists" Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Animals, ed. Holly Dugan and Karen Raber (Routledge, 2020) (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2020
Reviews of Animal Languages in the Middle Ages: Representations of Interspecies Communication (ed. Alison Langdon), and Michael J. Warren, Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations, in Speculum 95.3 (2020) 844-46 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2020
"Coda. Muteness and Disembodied Difference: Three Case Studies" Embodied Difference: Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World, ed. Richard H. Godden and Asa Simon Mittman (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 305-314
(Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2019
How Not to make a Human: Pets, Feral Children, Worms, Sky Burial, Oysters (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2019
"Animals and Violence: Medieval Humanism, 'Medieval Brutality', and the Carnivorous Vegetarianism of Margery Kempe" in The Routledge Handbook for Human-Animal History, ed. Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (Routledge, 2018), 499-517
(Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2018
"Bad Heritage: The American Viking Fantasy, from the Nineteenth Century to Now." Nature, Culture, Ecologies: Nature in Transcultural Contexts. Eds. Gesa Mackenthun and Stephanie Wodianka. Münster, Germany: Waxmann. 75-94. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2018
"Food," Posthuman Glossary, ed. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 160-62 (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2018
"Beast Fables." The Encyclopedia of British Medieval Literature, ed. Siân Echard and Robert Rouse (John Wiley & Sons, 2017) (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2017
"Medieval." The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, ed. Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (Cambridge University Press, 2017) , 3-15
(Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2017
"The Friar's Tale: Animals and the Question of Human Agency," The Open-Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales, ed. Candace Barrington, Brantley L. Bryant, Richard H. Godden, Daniel T. Kline, Myra Seama (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2017
"Biopolitics in the Forest." The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain. Eds. Randy Schiff and Joseph Taylor. Ohio State University Press. 33-55 (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2016
"How Delicious We Must Be / Folcuin's Horse and the Dog's Gowther, Beyond Care." Fragments towards a History of a Vanishing Humanism, ed. Eileen Joy and Myra Seaman (The Ohio State University Press, 2016), 175-92
(Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2016
"Introduction: Fabulous Animals" (with Holly Dugan), Early Modern Culture 11 (2016): 46-52 (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2016
edited special issue, with Holly Dugan, Early Modern Culture 11 (2016) (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2016
Edition and translation of excerpts from the Prologue to "Robert of Greatham, Miroir ou Evangile des domnees," in Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts and Translations, c. 1120-c. 1450, Eds. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Thelma Fenster, Delbert Russell, (Boydell & Brewer), 127-35. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2016
Review of L'humain et l'animal dans la France médiévale (XIIe-XVe siècles). Human and Animal in Medieval France (12th-15th c.), eds. Irène Fabry-Tehranchi and Anna Russakoff, in Speculum 91.1 (2016): 196-97
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2016
"Creeping Things, Matter's Endless Generation." Elemental Ecocriticism. Eds. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert. University of Minnesota Press, 209-36 (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2015
"Insensate Oysters and Our Nonconsensual Existence." Oceanic New York (ed. Steve Mentz, Punctum Books 2015), 79-91
(Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2015
Steel, Karl and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. "Race, Travel, Time, Heritage." Book review essay. postmedieval, "Making Race Matter in the Middle Ages" issue. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Against Animal Authenticity, Against the Forced March of the Now: A Review of Nicole Shukin's Animal Capital." A 4325-word book review essay for The Electronic Book Review. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
"Touching Back: Responding to Reading Skin." Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture. Ed. Katie L. Walker. Palgrave Macmillan. 183-95. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2013
"Abyss: Everything Is Food." postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 4.1: 93-104. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2013
Review of Medieval Pets, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle. The Medieval Review, September. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2013
"A Fourteenth-Century Ecology: 'The Former Age' with Dindimus." Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts. Ed. Carolynne van Dyke. Palgrave Macmillan. 185-99. (reviewed here) (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2012
"Centaurs, Satyrs and Cynocephali: Medieval Scholarly Teratology and the Question of the Human." The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Eds. Asa Mittman and Peter Dendle. Ashgate. 257-74. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2012
"Kill Me, Save Me, Let Me Go: Custance, Virginia, Emelye." Dark Chaucer. Eileen A. Joy, Nicola Masciandaro and Myra Seaman, eds. Punctum Books. 149-58. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2012
"With the World, or Bound to Face the Sky: The Postures of the Wolf-Child of Hesse." Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Punctum Books. 9-34. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2012
"Ridiculous Mourning: Dead Pets and Lost Humans." "Animalia" cluster, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34: 345-49. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2012
Review of Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature. Gender in the Middle Ages, by Dana M. Oswald. The Medieval Review, November. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2012
Steel, Karl, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Mary Kate Hurley and Eileen Joy. "Two Proposals for Increasing Persistence, Exposure, and Humiliation." Section in "Why We Blog" article. Literature Compass 9.12: 1016-18. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2012
"The Phoenix and the Turtle / Number There in Love Was Slain." Shakesqueer. Ed. Madhavi Menon. Duke University Press. 271-78. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2011
How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages. Ohio State University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2011
Review of Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature, by Bruce Thomas Boehrer. Renaissance Quarterly 64: 325-26. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2011
Review of Engaging With Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Eds. Lisa Kiser and Barbara Hanawalt. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 110: 123-26. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2011
Review of From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain, by Jill Mann. Medium Aevum 80.2: 331-32. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2011
Steel, Karl and Peggy McCracken. "The Animal Turn: Into the Sea With the Fish Knights of Perceforest." postmedieval 2.1: 88-100. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2011
Steel, Karl and Peggy McCracken. "The Animal Turn." postmedieval 2.1. (Co-edited theme issue, with essays by Cary Wolfe, Sarah Kay, Peter Travis, Gary Lim, Susan Crane and Sarah Stanbury). (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2011
"Woofing and Weeping With Animals in the Last Days." postmedieval 1.1/2: 187-93. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2010
Review of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. The Medieval Review October. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2010
"An Unfinished Conversation About Glowing Green Bunnies" (book Foreword, authored by Jeffrey J. Cohen with incorporated dialog between Cohen, Eileen Joy, Holly Crocker and Karl Steel. Queering the Non/Human.Eds. Noreen Giffney and Myra J. Hird. Ashgate. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2008
"How to Make a Human." Exemplaria 20.1: 3-27. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2008
Steel, Karl and Christopher Wise, trans. "Wanderings: Bamako, Moscow, Delhi," by El Hadjj Sekou Tall. Journal of African Travel Writing 8-9 (2000-01): 77-94. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2001
Creative Work
"How Will God Know His Own? Vaccination Worries and Medieval Resurrection Doctrine," The Sundial (online journal for the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), February 3, 2022 2022
"That Uncertain Feeling: Plaguetime and Judgment, Medieval to Modern," Digital Defoe January 5, 2022, "Reflections on Recovery" roundtable 2022
"The Adapted Words of Memmie le Blanc," Lapham's Quarterly Roundtable July 6, 2021 [one of the top 8 original pieces on the Lapham's Roundtable for 2021] 2021
"Afterwords: Remy's Open Hand." Whiskey & Fox 4.1, March: 36-39. 2010
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities. (Awards and Honors) 2011
PSC-CUNY Research Award. $3,499.64. (Awards and Honors) 2011
Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, Spring. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
Travel grant. $1,200. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
New Faculty Fund. $542. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
PSC-CUNY Research Award. $3,750. (Awards and Honors) 2009
Travel grant. $450. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
New Faculty Fund. $410. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
PSC-CUNY Research Award. $3767.50. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
Travel grant. $475. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
"On the Limits of Reason and Freedom: On Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy," Tulane Department of French and Italian (February 2023) (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2023
"The End of Us: Evangelical Dystopian Eschatology and the Medieval Fifteen Signs of the Last Days," American Comparative Literature Association, Chicago (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2023
"Dehumanization, Animality, and Honor: On William Dunbar's Racist Satire," Northwestern Medieval Colloquium (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2022
"Human Nature: Rational and Mortal," International Congress on the Study of the Middle Ages, Leeds, UK 2022 (virtual) (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2022
Four talks to the EHESS Paris at the invitation of Pierre-Olivier Dittmar from AHMOLA (Anthropologie historique du long Moyen Âge) (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2022
Respondant to session "On the Human / Nonhuman / Posthuman in Medieval China I," Medieval Academy of America, Charlottesville, Virginia (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2022
"'Kynes Craft': Animal Labor and Brute Rationality in Piers Plowman" for the 2019 International Piers Plowman Society in Miami, a session on "Post-Humanist Langland, (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2019
"Be Reasonable: Animality and Personifications of Reason, Loosely through Langland" NYU Medieval Forum talk, May 1, 2019 (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
"Middle Scots Misogynoir: On Teaching Dunbar's 'My ladye with the mekle lippis'" for the 2019 Medieval Academy of America Meeting in Philadelphia, at a roundtable on "Graduate Student Committee Special Session: Handling Issues of Inclusivity and Respect in the Medieval Studies Classroom as an Ally: Classes We Teach, Classes We Take." (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2019
"What Hanne Darboven can tell us about the Middle English 'Names of the Hare in English'" International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, session on Character and the Nonhuman, May 10, 2019. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2019
"Cuthbert and the Gesturing Geese: Reason, Language, and Accommodation in a Medieval Animal Story" University of Chicago Medieval Studies Workshop (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
"Thinking like a Cow: Bestial Reason and Posthumanism in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls," Loyola University Chicago Medieval Lecture Series (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
"Metamorphoses XV and Truth as a Political Problem," New Chaucer Society, Toronto, for session on "Forming Knowledge" (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2018
"The Vinland Sagas and Teaching against White Supremacy," Modern Language Association, New York, for session on "Approaching 1492 from the Middle Ages" (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2018
"Crawling Matter: Spontaneous Generation from the Ancients to the Moderns," British Animal Studies Network, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
"Institutional Power, Sexual Harassment, and the Physician's Tale," International Medieval Congress Kalamazoo, for session on "Mood" (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2018
"Medieval Nonhumanisms: A Sketch of a Nonsystematic Approach to Medieval Animal Studies," Center for the Study of the Middle Ages, University of Birmingham (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
"Medieval Nonhumanisms: Animal Studies outside the Classroom," Leeds Animal Studies Network, Leeds University (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
"Unseasonal," for Ecological Catastrophe: Past and Present, MLA 2017 (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2017
"Feral Founder or Feral Foundling? Wolf Children from the Ancients to the Fourteenth-Century Child of Hesse," MLAC, St Chad's, University of Durham (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
"Logsex in Hell," Extro-fictions from the Middle Ages to the Anthropocene, MLA 2017 (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2017
"Medieval Muteness: Animals, Disability, and Objects" Fourth Annual Medieval Studies Colloquium, University of Wisconsin Madison (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
"Sign Language and Community: Jamming the 'Forbidden Experiment' in François Catrou's Histoire générale de l'empire du Mogol, Miami University French in Dijon Study Abroad Program (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
"The Prioress and her Pets," Medieval & LAE Colloquia, Yale University (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
"Feral and Isolated Children from Herodotus to Akbar to Hesse: Heroes, Thinkers, and Friends of Wolves," Utrecht University Comparative Literature Seminar (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"Logsex in Hell: What a Body Can't Do," The Body Unbound: Literary Approaches to the Classical Corpus (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2016
"Minimal Animals: Medieval Oysters and Our Nonconsensual Existence." Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture, UCLA English Department/Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"Food for Worms, or Food for Birds? Sky Burial in Medieval Europe." Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"Animals, Gesture, and Communication Despite it All," New Chaucer Society, London (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2016
"Animals and Disability: Cuthbert's Ravens, Gesture, and Misfit Environments" University of Pennsylvania Medieval and Renaissance Reading Group and Disability Studies (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"Barely Life." George Washington University Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute Transition, Scale, Catastrophe. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2015
"Rigor," .Fourth Biennial Babel Working Group Meeting, Toronto (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2015
"The Bare Life of (Medieval) Oysters." Quodlibet Medieval Studies Club, Cornell University. Ithaca, N.Y. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2015
Response to "New Materialisms and the End of Critique." Modern Language Association. Vancouver, British Columbia. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2015
"'By Chance or 'In Itself?': Spontaneous Generation and the Problem of Material Agency." New Chaucer Society. Reykjavík, Iceland. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2014
"Our Nonconsensual Existence: Oysters and Us." 42nd UBC Medieval Workshop: Medieval and Renaissance Oecologies. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2014
"Place and Flesh in the Topographia Hibernica," St John's University Graduate English Conference. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2014
"Spontaneous Generation and the Problem of 'Automatic' Agency." International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2014
"Satisfaction." International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2014
Paired presentations: "Is a Quantum Mechanics Literary Studies Desirable or Necessary" and "Subatomic." Third Biennial Meeting of the Babel Working Group. Santa Barbara, Calif. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2014
"'A Charitable and Pitous Conscience': The Queer Prioress and Her Pets." Nonhumans and Sympathy Symposium. University of Maryland. College Park, Md. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013
"Feeding the Dogs." International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2013
"Creeping Things, Matter's Own Life." 30th Alabama Symposium on English and American Literature, Elemental Ecocriticism (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013
"Everything Is Food: Medieval Death Poetry and Ecocriticism." Whiting Seminar. Wolfe Institute, Brooklyn College. Spring. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2013
"Invertebrate Architecture: Premodern Oysters and New York's Future" roundtable discussion. Oceanic New York. St. John's University. Queens, N.Y. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013
"Worms and Ethics." Brooklyn College Faculty Day. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2013
"A Singular Cat, a Mess of Vermin, and the Appetites of The Disputation Between the Body and the Worms." Theory and the Medieval Animal. University College London Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012
"Abyss." Ecomaterialism session. 2nd Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2012
"Biopolitics in the Forest: On Lively Deer, Lively Carcasses, and the Appetites of Lepers." New York University Medieval Forum. Oct. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012
"Everything Is Food." Robot Weekend: Being Human Gizmos. Penn State Institute for the Arts and the Humanities. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012
"How to Make a Human: Animals in the Middle Ages. Miami University Study Abroad Dijon Program, June 6. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012
"Irrational (Human) Objects of a Rational Law: On Deer Carcasses and the Medieval English Forest." New Chaucer Society. Portland, Ore. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2012
"Poachers, Lepers, and the Deer's Lively Carcass." Human/Animal Symposium. International Medieval Society - Paris. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2012
"Ridiculous Grief: Dead Animals and Lost Humans." Constituting the Human Conference. New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011
"Thanks Unending: Dindimus With the World." How to Make a Human Symposium. Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, George Washington University. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Unmaking Humans: Several Medieval Nonhumanisms." Animal Studies Interdisciplinary Workshop. University of Michigan. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Weeping With Erkenwald; or, Complicit With Grace." Modern Language Association. Los Angeles. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011
"With the World, or Bound to Face the Sky: The Postures of the Wolf Child of Hesse." Animals, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects in the Early Modern Period Conference. March 11. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Yvain's Herdsman, A Lion, and Several Dead Dogs: Rules for Being Human, and Some Ways Out." Program in Medieval Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"On Not Finishing Erkenwald." Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium on "Always Historicize? Historicism, Post-historicism and Medieval Studies." New York University. April 1. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2010
"The Child of Hesse: On Walking and Not Walking With Wolves." Third Annual Roundtable on New Directions in Medieval Scholarship. CUNY Graduate Center. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2010
"The Past as Past Is Its Disappearance: Erkenwald and the Jews." New Chaucer Society Conference. Siena, Italy, July. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2010
"The Wolf-Child of Hesse: Bound to the Sky." Plenary Panel on Critical Methodology, Twenty-second Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Conference. Barnard College. New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2010
"Will Wonders Never Cease: St. Erkenwald with Claustrophilia." Claustrophilia Seminar. George Washington University Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
"Woofing and Weeping: Mourning With Animals in the Last Days." International Medieval Conference. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"Losing Anthropocentrism." Brooklyn College Faculty Day. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
"Number There in Love Was Slain." Shakesqueer Symposium. Cornell University. Ithaca, N.Y. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008
"Reason, Death and Passion in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle." Works in Progress Seminar. Brooklyn College. March 11. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2008
"Symphytic Gowther and Other Worldly Animals." 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
"Talking Animals." Robert. L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Talk with Marc Shell. April 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2008
"The Return of the Pig: Violence and Meat in Resurrection Doctrine." Southeast Medieval Association Conference. St. Louis. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
"Hunting in Chrétien's Yvain: A Reassessment of Le Goff." International Medieval Conference. Kalamazoo, Mich. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
"Meat and the Violence of Reason in the Middle Ages." Animal Studies Group, Queen's University. Kingston, Ontario. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2005
"The Child Christ and Pigs in the Oven." International Medieval Conference. Leeds, United Kingdom. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2005
"Incest, Aristocratic Origins and Monstrous Identity in Des Grantz Geanz." Medieval Academy of America Conference. Seattle. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004
Professional Leadership
Faculty Council Course and Standing Committee - Chair (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2021
Faculty Council Course and Standing Committee, Member: Fall 2008- Spring 2010, Spring 2020 - Spring 2021 (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2020
Graduate Center English Department Curriculum Committee Chair, 2020- present (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2020
2018 - present: Brooklyn College English Department prize committee, chair. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2018
2018 to present: Brooklyn College Faculty Council Committee on Scholarships (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2018
2018 to present: CUNY Graduate Center English Department Admissions Committee (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2018
2018 to present; Brooklyn College English Department appointments committee (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2018
New York Medieval Club, President, Fall 2017 - present (two-year term + one extra year) (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2017
Fall 2016, Co-Chair, General Education and Core Curriculum Committee (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2016
Member, General Education Committee, 2014-2015. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2015
Member, Core Curriculum Committee, 2012-14. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2012
Member, Faculty Senate Committee on Committees. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2010
(English) departmental representative, Brooklyn College Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, 2009-present. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009
English departmental secretary, 2009-present. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2009
Humanities divisional delegate, Faculty Council, Fall 2009-Spring 2010 and Spring 2011-present. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2009
Member, Course and Standing Committee, four semesters--2008-10. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2009
Member, editorial board, Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009
Member, editorial board, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009
Member, Departmental Undergraduate Research Conference Committee, 2007-present. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2007
Community Activities
Conversation with Christopher Petersonson about his new book, Monkey Trouble, at Columbia University. 2017
Oct 5 Panel Discussion: Animal and Environmental Studies on oysters to the Columbia University Medieval Colloquium 2015
Video Introduction to Critical Animal Theory, for Itineration: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media, and Culture, "Big Ideas" series. 2013
"Meat Me in Paradise" talk at Proteus Gowanus Paradise Sermons. April 3. 2011
"Saints, Monsters, and Animals: Some Ways of Being Human in the Middle Ages" Talk given to the Brooklyn College IRPE (Institute for Retirees in Pursuit of Education) Intellectual Life Lecture Series, March 17. 2011
Interview with Kris Coffield on the blog Fractured Politics. 2011
Respondent, Brooklyn College Graduate Student Conference, 2010-11. 2010
Other Professional Activities
Panel discussion on Medieval Animal Trials at "Animals of the Jury," pre-performance panel discussion for play Twelve Angry Animals at NYU Tisch 2019
Review of Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society, ed. Laura D. Gelfand (Brill 2016) in The Medieval Review, May 2017
2017
Advisory Board, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature 2015
Chair, Brooklyn College Faculty Council Committee on Academic Foundations, Fall 2015 2015
Talk on oysters at Columbia Medieval Colloquium's Animal and Environmental Studies panel. 2015
Chairman, Wolfe Institute Interdisciplinary Study Group on Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Fall. 2010
Ad hoc reviewer for PSC-CUNY grants (2009-2011) 2009
Chairman, Wolfe Institute Interdisciplinary Study Group on Critical Animal Theory, Fall. 2009
Co-organizer, "Glossing Is a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present and Future of Commentary." CUNY Graduate Center. New York. April 9-10. 2009
Steel, Karl, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Eileen Joy and Mary Kate Hurley. Medieval studies blog, In the Middle. 2006-present. 2006