2011 Executive Board Elections

Position in English Literature:

Debra Best received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, and first joined SEMA in 1995.  She is currently an Associate Professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills.  She has published and presented numerous papers on the role of monsters in Middle English romance.  Her current project examines laughter and humor in the romances, and she received the Sutton Research Initiative Award from her university to continue this research. 

OR

Alison Gulley received her B.A. in English from the University of Texas and an M.A. and Ph. D. in medieval English literature language from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She spent nine years teaching medieval and Renaissance literature and freshman composition at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC, and then made a happy move to Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where she is on the faculty of the English Department and Women’s Studies.  She teaches classes in medieval literature, Chaucer (at the graduate level), the history of the English language, Arthurian literature, research and bibliography, and sophomore British literature.  Alison’s research generally focuses on spirituality in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature and she has published on Ælfric’s virgin martyrs and on Margery Kempe.  She has recently finished an article on the 2007 film Beowulf as a paradigm for understanding the American response to the events of 9/11 and is finally wrapping up her book The Displacement of the Body in Ælfric’s Virgin Martyr Lives for Ashgate Press.  She is eager to return to a study of literary representations of torture and affective piety in Old English literature.  She has been a member of and presenter at SEMA since 2001.

Position in Foreign Languages:

David S. King is an associate professor of French at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He has also taught at Carson-Newman College (2001-2004), the University of Memphis (1998-2001). and Northwestern University (1997-1998). He completed his PhD at Washington University, under the direction of Norris J. Lacy. As a scholar, David focuses on violence and related issues in twelfth- and thirteenth-century French literature. He has written several essays on amputation as a metaphor: “Mutilation and Dismemberment in the Chanson de Roland: a Question of Faith?” Romance Notes (2005), “The Meaning of Amputation in the Chansons de Geste,” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures (2008), “A Motif Transformed: The Meaning of Lost Limbs in Arthurian Romance,” Arthuriana: The Journal of Arthurian Studies (2008), “Learning from Loss: Amputation in Three Thirteenth-Century French Verse Romances,” (forthcoming in Modern Philology). and “Identity, Dismemberment, and Illusion in L’Atre périlleux,”(forthcoming). For this year's SEMA conference, David has deviated from his habit--"Moral Education in L'Esquiriel, or What's a Mother to Say?"--and will talk about sex rather than violence.

OR

Joan E. McRae earned her B.A. in French from Agnes Scott College, her M.A. from Middlebury College (after a year at the University of Georgia) and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. After twelve years of teaching at the all-male Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, she answered a call to fill the Chair of Foreign Languages  at Middle Tennessee State University where she supervises 12 languages. She teaches Medieval French and Detective Fiction courses at MTSU, as well as Introductory French and Film. Her research interests encompass 15th century French poetry, Arthurian and Grail literature, and the Romance of the Rose. She has published two critical editions of the 15th century French poet Alain Chartier (Routledge and Champion) and is a co-editor in the Yale 229 Arthurian Cycle series (Brepols); her current projects are a co-edited volume of essays on Alain Chartier (Brill) and a monograph on the literary quarrels of the Romance of the Rose and the Belle Dame Sans Mercy  (Florida State). She gave her first paper at SEMA in 1999 in Knoxville, just a few years ago.

Open position

Dorothy Schrader is a faculty member at Oklahoma State University (Stillwater) in the Dept of Foreign Languages (French).  She has published articles on various 13th century chansons de geste in Manuscripta, Olifant, and in proceedings of the Société Rencesvals and is a frequent presenter at SEMA and MAMA on recent topics that include Old French fabliaux, text and image studies and French epic exordia.   Schrader has been a participant in various NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes on medieval literature, manuscript illuminations, and archival sciences.  She received her Ph.D. from Florida State University (Harry Williams, dissertation director).  She has presented conference papers at 10 different SEMA venues (1982-2011).

OR

Dean Swinford is an Assistant Professor of English at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. He teaches undergraduate classes in medieval and early modern literature, composition, and the global humanities; his graduate courses focus on medieval studies and research methods. He has also taught at the University of North Florida, the University of Florida, and Florida International University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Florida under the direction of James J. Paxson and wrote his dissertation while working as a Fulbright Fellow at Ghent University in Belgium. Recent essays appear or are forthcoming in Modern Philology (a study of stellification in The House of Fame), The Journal of Medieval Religious Studies (a comparison of John of Salisbury’s treatment of dream interpretation and the organic metaphor of the state in the Policraticus), LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory (an ecocritical reading of John Gardner’s Grendel), and The Mediaeval Journal (an analysis of astronomical practice and diabolical summoning in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium). His book, Through the Daemon’s Gate (Routledge 2006), examines the philosophical and thematic influences of medieval dream narratives on the Somnium, an allegorical “dream” that supports Copernican theories. SEMA provides a valuable forum for scholars at all stages of their careers; if elected, Dean hopes to take an active role in expanding these opportunities.

Position in History