About Me
My career at Ithaca College began in 1980. From 1995 to 2002, and again in Fall 2006, I was department chair. Despite that, in 2007, the college named me the Charles A. Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts. I love teaching, and one day I hope to be as good a teacher as my wife Paula, who is an adjunct in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
I've been an avid traveler ever since my time as an exchange student at the Colegio Humboldt in Puebla, Mexico, in 1966. Being a medievalist has given me the opportunity (or excuse) to live in Germany twice during sabbaticals, when I 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. My favorite places include the Basque country and Santiago de Compostela in Spain; Provence, Brittany, and Normandy in France; Dresden and Bavaria in Germany; Hadrian's Wall, Wales, and Yorkshire in Britain; the Dingle Peninsula and County Cork in Ireland; Groningen in the Netherlands; Sorrento and Pompeii in Italy; Cusco and Machu Picchu in Peru; L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland; the American Southwest; and anywhere in Iceland.
In 2012, I resumed studying the piano after too many years away from it.
In May 2010, my wife Paula and I visited western Ireland with Greg Bostwick and Julie Bonney. The day Greg (who took this photo) and I climbed Skellig Michael, a small, rocky island off the coast, was memorable for the sun, the cold wind, the early medieval "beehive" huts once used by the monks who lived out their penitential lives at the top, and the rough ride to and from the island in a small boat.