Michael Twomey

I joined the English department in 1980 and was tenured in 1987. From 1995 to 2002, and again in Fall 2006, I was department chair. During sabbaticals I have taught at the University of Maryland's Munich Campus (1988-89) and at the University of Dresden (1996-97), the latter courtesy of a Fulbright senior lectureship. In September 2002 I returned to Dresden to teach a one-week graduate seminar on medieval literature and critical theory. Elsewhere in Europe and in North America I have given over thirty-five lectures at various universities and conferences.

My courses are in medieval literature, the English language, and the Bible. In 2002 I started a Latin program that is now part of the new Classics Minor. Through grants from the Keck and Hewlett foundations as well as from Ithaca College I have advanced the use of technology in humanities teaching. I am a member of Sigma Tau Delta, Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Delta national honoraries, with stints as president of the local chapters of PKP and PBD. I have worked on numerous committees in the department, school, and college.

I can be heard reading passages from Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur in a reconstructed 15th century London pronunciation on the CD "Malory Aloud: A Dramatic Reading of Excerpts from Le Morte Darthur," produced by the Chaucer Studio. My essay about these readings, “The Voice of Aurality in the Morte Darthur” won the James Randall Leader Prize for Outstanding Essay in Arthuriana, 2003, from the International Arthurian Society, North American Branch.

Currently I am on the editorial boards of Literature Compass (Oxford) and Arthurian Literature (Cambridge).

Public Web site

Travels With Sir Gawain

Current research projects

I am part of an international team producing an edition of the French and Latin versions of De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomeus Anglicus, often referred to as "Shakespeare's encyclopedia." In summer 2003 I was assisted by Jason Daniel, a senior with a grant from the Emerson Foundation that supported his research on this project. The first volume of the edition appeared in April, 2007.

Some recent publications

"'Morgan le Fay, Empress of the Wilderness': A Newly Recovered Arthurian Text in London, BL Royal 12.c.ix," Arthurian Literature 25 (2008), 67-91.

“Encyclopedias,” in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. II: 1100-1400, ed. Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 244-49.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, Vol. I: Introduction, Prologue, et Livres I-IV, ed. B. van den Abeele, H. Meyer, M. W. Twomey, B. Roling, and R. J. Long, De Diversis Artibus 78 (NS 41) (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007)

"Middle English Translations of Medieval Encyclopedias," Literature Compass 3/3 (2006), 331-40.

"Reading Chaucer's Latin Aloud," in 'Seyd in forme and reverence: Essays in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr., ed. T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer (Adelaide, Australia / Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 181-90.

"The Gawain-Poet," in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 273-87.

Reviews for Speculum: Journal of the Medieval Academy of America; Journal of Medieval Latin; Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, and other journals.