Louise M Bishop (PhD, Fordham University, 1984) is Associate Professor Emerita of Literature at the Robert D. Clark Honors College. A native of New Jersey and award-winning teacher, her academic training focused on the European Middle Ages. She has treated in both her research and her teaching fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and prose, including the poetry and prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and Reginald Pecock, along with anonymous works that abound in a manuscript era.
Her book Words, Stones and Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England (Syracuse University Press, 2007) considers ideas about and practices of healing in Middle English poetry and prose, exploring the cognitive and physical effects of words in the healing process. The “afterlives” of Chaucer and Langland in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, as well as medieval-themed movies and “medievalism” generally, animate her thinking. Her interests include sixteenth-century Britain, early to late, including the run-up to the Tudor dynasty and its memorialization in theatre, including Shakespeare's. She has explored conceptions of the heart and its centrality to the health of body and mind as expressed in medieval and early modern literature.
Bishop has developed graduate and undergraduate courses on the medieval dream vision, Middle English mystics, medieval movies, medieval travel—pilgrimage and crusade, medievalism, and medieval healing under such titles as “Inventing the Middle Ages” and “The Idea of the Vernacular.” In 1996 Bishop taught for the UO in Avignon, France. In concert with Keble College, University of Oxford, she developed and supervised the Clark Honors College's tutorial-based Trinity-term CHC@Oxford program from 2014 through 2018.
Besides serving as Associate Dean of the CHC three times (2008-2011; 2013-2014; 2016-2017), Bishop's professional activity has included travel to several European countries; Accra, Ghana; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu in India.
LOUISE M. BISHOP curriculum vitae February 2023
Clark Honors College tel. (541) 346-0733 (voicemail only)
University of Oregon fax (541) 346-0125
Eugene, OR 97403-1293 lmbishop@uoregon.edu
https://honors.uoregon.edu/directory/professors-emerit/all/lmbishop
Education
Ph.D. 1984, Fordham University
Dissertation: Will, Inheritance, Possession and the King: Theories of Redemption and Canon and King's Law in Piers Plowman, Joseph E. Grennen, mentor.
Phi Beta Kappa, 1984
Charles Donahue Prize for Medieval Literature, 1981
M.A. 1980, Fordham University
B.A. 1978, Fairleigh Dickinson University, summa cum laude, Honors College, achievement scholarship
Employment
September 2017 – present -- Associate Professor Emerita of Literature, Clark Honors College
July 2014 – September 2017 – Associate Professor of Literature (retired), Clark Honors College
September 2007 – July 2014 – Associate Professor of Literature, Clark Honors College
2014 Herman Teaching Award, University of Oregon
July 2008 – September 2011, March 2013 – April 2014, September 2016 – March 2017 -- Associate Dean, Clark Honors College (outload)
September 2001 - September 2007--Assistant Professor of Literature, Clark Honors College
Jan. 1997 - June 2001 -- Adjunct Assistant Professor, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
1993 - June 2001 -- Senior Instructor, Department of English, University of Oregon
1995 NEH Summer Institute on Chaucer and Langland, University of Colorado at Boulder
1987-1993 -- Instructor, Department of English, University of Oregon
1993 Ersted Teaching Award, University of Oregon
1985-1987 -- Associate Dean, Graduate School of Business Administration, Fordham University
1983-85 -- Assistant Dean, Graduate School of Business Administration, Fordham University
1979-83 -- Teaching Fellow, Department of English, Fordham University
Publications
Book
Words, Stones, and Herbs: the Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England. Syracuse University Press, 2007. 250 pages
Journal articles
"The International Piers Plowman Society“ in New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession (under review, submitted January 2023)
"Piers Plowman: Text and Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 21, 1 (Spring 2014): 27-36.
"Raising Authority: Father Chaucer and the Vivification of Print," JEGP 106, 3 (July 2007): 336-63.
"‘Of Goddes pryvetee nor of his wyf': The Confusion of Orifices in ‘The Miller’s Tale,’" Texas Studies in Language and Literature 44:3 (Fall 2002): 231-46. Reprinted in Modern Critical Views, published by Facts on File (2006).
"Dangerous Translation in the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale," The Chaucer Journal. Accepted by the editor, Jean Jost, in 2005. 43 pages in typescript.
"Queering Medieval Law and Piers Plowman," Yearbook of Langland Studies 15 (2002): 18-24
"Dame Study and Women's Literacy," Yearbook of Langland Studies 12 (1998): 97-115.
"Will and the Law of Property in Piers Plowman," Yearbook of Langland Studies 10 (1996): 23-41.
Book chapters
“John Stow,” in The Chaucer Encyclopedia, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
"Reginald Pecock's reading heart and the health of body and soul," Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture, ed. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. 139-58.
“English and Latin in late medieval England: what medical and poetic texts tell us,” Latin Language and World Cultures, ed. Dasappan Vattathil, S.J., The Media House, Delhi [India], 2013: 89-100.
“Chaucer,” in Icons of the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia of Medieval Masters, ed. Lister Matheson. Greenwood Press, 2011. 2 volumes. Volume 1, 175-204.
"A Trace of Chaucer in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale," Shakespeare and the Middle Ages, eds. Martha Driver and Sid Ray. McFarland Press, 2009. 232-244.
"The myth of the flat earth: Did medieval people really believe in a flat, rather than a round, earth?" Misconceptions about the Middle Agest, eds. Bryon L. Grigsby and Stephen J. Harris, Routledge, 2008. 97-101. Paperback edition 2009.
"Hearing God's Voice: Kind Wit's Call to Labor in Piers Plowman," in The Work of Work, eds. Allen Frantzen and Douglas Moffat, Boydell and Brewer, 1994. 191-205.
Other
Richard II for Ian Doescher's Shakespeare 2020 project.
“Gottfredson steers UO in the right direction,” Eugene Register Guard, June 20, 2013.
“Belonging in Belongings,” Oregon Humanities, summer 2009: 29-32.
“Boomers’ children are born leaders,” Eugene Register Guard, November 13, 2008.
“Family values as political concept,” Mothers Movement Online, April 2004
Current projects
Book manuscript, Mastering the Middle Ages: Afterlives of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland.
An analysis of the tracks of Chaucer and Langland’s poetry and personae from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in terms of reform, progress, and loss. Chapters refigure Chaucer’s trace as writer and figure via sixteenth-century folio editions of his work; Hamlet’s “conscience” recast by allegorical figures in Piers Plowman; Chaucer’s shadow in Winter’s Tale; the conscious literary medievalisms of Henry VIII that invent and reflect the medieval and early modern; refiguring emblems of loss apparent in theatre but answered by gendered “medieval masters”; Chaucer’s and Langland’s passus in George Eliot’s 19th century realist-reformist fiction Middlemarch and what they mean for literary history.
Reviews (since 1998)
Lawrence Warner, The Myth of “Piers Plowman”: Constructing a Medieval Literary Archive, Notes and Queries (2016): 113-4.
Emily Steiner, Reading Piers Plowman, Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2015): 239-245.
Jennifer Vaught, Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and Early Modern England, JEGP 112.2 (April 2013): 246-248.
Lawrence Warner, The Lost History of Piers Plowman, The Medieval Review (on-line publication), October 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13592
William F. Woods, Chaucerian Spaces: Spatial Poetics in Chaucer's Opening Tales, Speculum 84 (2009): 1122-3.
John Hines, Voices in the Past: English Literature and Archaeology, JEGP 107 (2008): 116-119.
The Middle Ages at Work, eds. Michael Uebel and Kellie Robertson. Yearbook of Langland Studies 20 (2007): 235-240
Julia Boffey, Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions: An Anthology. The Medieval Review (electronic journal-http://www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/), June 2005
Elizabeth Fowler, Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early English Writing. The Medieval Review (electronic journal-http://www.hti.umich.edu/t/tmr/), July 2004
Carolyn Collette, Species, Phantasms, and Images: Vision and Medieval Psychology in "The Canterbury Tales." The Medieval Review (electronic journal--http://hdl.handle.net/2022/5306), July 2002
Erik Jager, The Book of the Heart. The Medieval Review (electronic journal--http://hdl.handle.net/2022/5079), September 2001
T. L. Burton, ed. Sidrak and Bokkus: A parallel-text edition from Bodleian Library, Ms Laud Misc. 559 and British Library, MS Lansdowne 793. The Medieval Review (electronic journal--http://hdl.handle.net/2022/4811), August 2000
R.W.McConchie, Lexicography and Physi>Douglas Parker, The praier and complaynte of the plowman unto Christe. The Medieval Review (electronic journal--http://hdl.handle.net/2022/4587), October 1998
Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space. Mercator's World Magazine, September/October 1998
David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms. The Medieval Review (electronic journal--http://hdl.handle.net/2022/4548), April 1998
Carolyn Larrington, Women and Writing in Medieval Europe. Medieval Feminist Newsletter 25 (1998)
Conference Presentations (since 1998)
Respondent, "Disability and Medicine in Piers Plowman," International Piers Plowman Society Meeting, Miami, April 2019.
“Post-colonial Middle English: the case of Geoffrey Chaucer,” Thrice-told Tales: Reconfiguring the Canon, All Saints College, Kerala, India, 10-11 December 2018
“Why Read the Classics? Revisiting Italo Calvino - An American Perspective,” Literature, Culture and Communication: Revisiting the Classics, St Xavier’s College, Kerala, India, 7 December 2018
“Chaucer’s Line and Rising Theater: Transhistorical London in G. A. Sala’s ‘Wat Tyler, MP, An Operatic Extravaganza’ (1869),” New Chaucer Society Congress, London, July 2016 (withdrawn)
“Sic transit gloria: The Knight’s Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen,” New Chaucer Society Congress, Reykjavik, Iceland, July 2014
“Gnawen God with the gorge’ (B.10.57): the ethics of excess and the limits of imagination,” Leeds International Medieval Congress, UK, July 2011
“Desire in Langland and Shakespeare,” Fifth International Piers Plowman Society Conference, Oxford, UK, April 2011
"Chronology as History: Chaucer, Langland, Shakespeare," New Chaucer Society Congress, Siena, Italy, July 2010
"The Reading Heart from Reginald Pecock to Thomas Elyot," Cognitive Allegory Workshop, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 26 June, 2009. Invited participant. (Conference website: http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha/CognitiveAllegory/)
"The Reading Heart from Reginald Pecock to Thomas Elyot," Medieval Association of the Pacific, Albuquerque, NM, March 2009.
Teaching panel on Piers Plowman, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2008
"Reclaiming the Healing Word," 18th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2007.
"Similitude and difference: “verray matrimonye” and affinity in Piers Plowman and The Reule of Cristen Religion," Fourth International Piers Plowman Conference, May 17-19, 2007, University of Pennsylvania.
"Natural passion and moral virtue: Pecock and ‘Truth'," New Chaucer Society Congress, July 2006
"Early Modern Medicine: Self-help and State Authority in Thomas Elyot's Castel of Helth (1541)," Medicine Across Cultures: 600-1600, the Nineteenth Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Conference, December 2004
“Piers Plowman and the gendered imagination of public space,” Third International Langland Conference, Birmingham, England, July 2003
"'And you shall be whole': Vernacular medical reading and cure," Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2003
"Old and new, ideal and real: George Eliot's Middlemarch and Chaucer's 'Nun's Priest's Tale,'" Modern Language Association, December 2002
"A lady's ‘verily' ‘s as potent as a lord's": Counsel and Contraries in The Tale of Melibee and The Winter's Tale," New Chaucer Society Congress, Boulder, Colorado, July 2002
"Noli me tangere and a medical recipe: discursive intersections," International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2002
"Langland's Physicians and Illness as Metaphor," Medieval Academy, Tempe, AZ, March 2001
"London Contexts: Medicine," New Chaucer Society congress, London, July 2000
"Healing Words, Healing Images: Women's Work as Professional Healers," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2000
Invited respondent, Second International Langland Conference, Asheville, NC, July 1999
"Reading, Cure, and Gender: The Case of Late Medieval English Medical and Poetic Texts," Vernacularity: The Politics of Language and Style, annual conference of the Medieval/Renaissance Seminar at the University of Western Ontario, March 1999
"Explosive Vernacular in the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale and Passus X of Piers Plowman," SAMLA, Atlanta, GA, November 1998
"Chaucer and Langland: the Case of the Dream Vision," Panel organizer, New Chaucer Society, Sorbonne, Paris, July 1998. Click here for panel website.
Respondent, Hildegard of Bingen conference, University of Oregon, February 1998
"Latin and Vernacular: Roger Bacon and the Contexts of Langland's Reading," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1998
"The Homeopathic Metaphor and Medieval Medical Texts," Oregon Humanities Center, January 1998
Public lectures (since 1998)
"Women Writers: Prophets of Their Times, Fortnightly Club, Eugene, March 2021
Introduction to Richard II for the Shakespeare 2020 project, available at https://iandoescher.com/shakespeare/category/richard-ii/
“The History of Comedy,” Fortnightly Club, Eugene, November 2016
“Turn the Board,” Round Table Club, Eugene, November 2014
“Literature into Film: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” Fortnightly Club, Eugene, October 2012
“The Belonging in Belongings,” Round Table Club, Eugene, December 2008
“The Blue Light in the Living Room: Do the Media Promote Tribalism?”, Fortnightly Club, Eugene, March 2008
"Family Values as Political Concept," Fortnightly Club, Eugene, April 2002, published by Mother's Movement Online, April 2004
"Making a Difference," Mortarboard Induction, April 2001
"The Medicine of Gender," Retired Professors Association, University of Oregon, April 1999
"Making Pericles Work," Learning-in-Retirement, Eugene, OR, January 1999
Awards (since 1998, not including 1993 Ersted Teaching Award)
Herman Teaching Award, May 2014
Lorry Lokey Humanities and Sciences initiative, with Daniel Rosenberg and Samantha Hopkins, 2008-9
Oregon Research and Faculty Development grant-writing workshop, June 2006
Oregon Humanities Center Fellowship, Fall 2003
New Faculty Summer Research Award, Summer 2002
Mortarboard Professor of the Month, March 2000
Faculty Writing Across the Curriculum grant, Winter and Spring 2000
Center for the Study of Women in Society Research Grant, Winter 1999
Other professional activities
Organizing committee, International Piers Plowman Society meeting, London, Summer 2023
External Reader: Notes and Queries (2017), Viator (2015), Modern Philology (2013), Chaucer Review (2012, 2015), AVISTA (2012), Yearbook of Langland Studies (2011), Ashgate Publishing (1999, 2010), Broadview Press (2010), Oxford University Press (2007), Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (2006), Exemplaria (2005)
Local arrangements committee, New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress, Portland, Oregon, 2012
Councilor, Medieval Association of the Pacific, 1997-2000
Memberships
Modern Language Association
Medieval Academy
Medica, the Society for the Study of Medieval Medicine and Healing
International Piers Plowman Society
Medieval Association of the Pacific
New Chaucer Society
Alpha of Oregon Chapter, Phi Beta Kappa (President, 1998-99, Member-at-Large 1999-2002, Membership Chair 2001-02, Vice President 2012-14)
University service (since 1998)
Faculty Advisory Committee (elected), 2011-13, co-chair 2012-13
Senate Executive Committee, 2012-13
Clark Honors College Dean Search Committee, 2012-13
College Scholars Advisory Board, CAS, 2011-14
Membership on dissertation committees in the English Department:
Alison Ganze Langdon: PhD awarded December 2002
Sharity Nelson: PhD awarded September 2013
Chelsea Henson: PhD awarded June 2012
Timothy Asay: PhD awarded December 2014
William Fogarty: PhD awarded June 2015
Debbie Killingsworth
William Driscoll: PhD awarded Spring 2017
Alexis Kielb
Associate Deans committee, convened by Vice Provost Lisa Freinkel 2013-14
(Associate Deans committee, convened by Dean of Students Paul Shang, 2009-11)
LMS (Blackboard) review committee, convened by Dean of Libraries Deb Carver 2013-14
(Site License Advisory Committee, 2009-11)
Explore identity (Michele Norris visit) steering committee 2013-14
Stamps Scholarship review committee 2013-14
AFAB Study Abroad Committee, 2010-12
Blackboard Advisory Group, 2008-11
Distinguished Scholarships, 2009-11
Undergraduate Research initiative, 2009-2011
CSWS Executive Committee, 2008-2010
Honors College Futures committee, June 2007
Campus planning advisory group for west campus, September 2001
Teaching Effectiveness Program Advisory Group, 2000-01
CSWS Executive Board, 1999-2001
International Resource Center Advisory Committee, 2000-02
University Distinguished Awards committee, 1999, 2000
CSWS Grant Awards committee, 1998-99
Board member, Friends of the University Libraries (1992-99, president 1997-98)
New Student Orientation, Honors College, September 1998 through September 2010
Co-director, "Healing Arts," a Center for the Study of Women in Society Research Interest Group, 2002-present
Co-director, "Teaching the Past in the Present," an initiative of the Feminist Humanities Project, Center for the Study of Women in Society, 1997-2004
Administrative References
Dr. Barbara Altmann, President, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Academic References
Prof. C. David Benson, Dept. of English, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Prof. John M. Bowers, Dept. of English, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5011
Prof. James Simpson, Dept. of English, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138