Office: Keezel 206 MSC 1801
Phone: 540-568-3752 (office) 540-887-6177 (home)
Fax: 540 568 2983
Email: bankerda@jmu.edu
Office Hours: Summer 2008 by appointment only

Title: Associate Professor of Medieval Literature, Director of Graduate Studies

Courses:
ENG 599:  Bibliographic Methods and Research, TH 5-7:45
ENG 312:  Saints, Sinners & Their Stories in the Middle Ages, TT 12:30-1:45
ENG 416/503:  Old English, T 5-7:30

Specialties: Medieval literature: Old English, Middle English, Old Norse/Icelandic, Old Irish, Chaucer; Hagiography; Bibliographic and Textual Criticism; Anglo-Saxon literature & lexicography; History of Nineteenth-Century Medieval scholarship, Manuscript and early book history


Education: Ph.D., English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Iceland, Reykjavík Certificate in Modern Icelandic; M.A., English, Western Washington University, B.A., French, Michigan State University

Professional and Administrative:
Reviewer:  Old English Newsletter ( History of the Discipline)
Faculty-Member-in-Residence, London, Fall 2004

Current Research:
The Making of Joseph Bosworth’s A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, book in
progress

Saying Differently and Thinking Differently: Science Fiction as 'Namshub,'  article in progress with Professor Sharon Cote

R. T. Hampson’s “Lost” Transcipt of Cotton Tiberius B.i, article in progress

Research Awards:
The Laurence Urdang-DSNA Award, Dictionary Society of North American, summer 2007

JMU Faculty Educational Leave, Spring 2004

Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Spring 2004

The Falconer Madan Prize & The Bibliographical Society (England) Fellowship, 2004

The Laurence Urdang-DSNA Award, Dictionary Society of North America, 2002

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Texts at The British Library, 2001

Edna T. Shaeffer Humanist Award, College of Arts and Letters, 1998, 2002, 2007

College of Arts and Letters Faculty Summer Research Grants, 2000, 2006

University of Illinois Dissertation Fellowships, 1994, 1995

Pauline Dillon Gragg Fellowships, 1994. 1995

University of Illinois International Dissertation Research Grant, 1993

Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society

Teaching Awards:
James Madison University:
Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning:  A Workshop for Faculty and Librarians, Carrier Library, Summer 2006

Outstanding Educator Commendations, Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity

College of Arts & Letters Faculty Enhancement Grant (with Mark Rankin), for the development of an upper-level English course:  "Manuscript and Print Culture in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Eras," Spring 2008.

University of Illinois:
Harriet and Charles Luckmann Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award

Liberal Arts and Sciences College Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Graduate Teaching Assistants

Leo B. Kneer Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for the Department of English

Publications:
"Stranger in a Strange Land:  The Undergraduate in the Academic Library, A Collaborative Pedagogy for Undergraduate Research," forthcoming summer 2008, CEA Forum (with Melissa Van Vuuren)

"Memorials, Tributes, History of the Discipline,” The Years Work in Old English Studies 2005, in Old English Newsletter, Vol. 40.2, Winter 2007, pp. 8-15.

“Memorials, Tributes, History of the Discipline,” The Years Work in Old English Studies 2004,  in Old English Newsletter, Vol. 39.2, Winter 2006, pp. 9-14

“Teaching the Middle Ages through Travel in a Semester Residential Program,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (forthcoming Spring 2009)

"Old English Dictionaries," Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2d ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Oxford: Elsevier, 2005

Review of The Correspondence of Edward Lye. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross and Amanda J. Collins. Publication of the Dictionary of Old English 6. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004. In Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106.3 (2007): 414-416.

“Anglo-Saxon Conversion Narratives: Research Problems and Pedagogical Oportunities,” Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching, ed. Paul Cavill. D.S. Brewer, 2004. 141-52.

"Secularizing the Word: Conversion Models in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde," Chaucer Review 37 (2003): 196-218.

"T. Northcote Toller and the Making of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Supplement," Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures. Ed. Donald Scragg. D.S. Brewer, 2003. 301-21.

“Reconciling Family and Faith:  Ælfric's Lives of Saints and Domestic Dramas of Conversion,” Via Crucis:  Essays on Early Medieval Sources and Ideas in Memory of J. E. Cross, eds. Thomas N. Hall, Thomas D. Hill, and Charles D. Wright.  Medieval European Studies I.  West Virginia University Press, 2002.  138-57.

Ambrose in Anglo-Saxon England with Pseudo-Ambrose and Ambrosiaster.  Old English Newsletter, [Monograph] Subsidia 25.  Kalamazoo, MI:  The Medieval Institute for the Modern Language Association of America, 1997 (with Jessica Wegmann and Charles D. Wright).

Ambrose in Anglo-Saxon England with Pseudo-Ambrose and Ambrosiaster.  Website under construction: http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/ambrose (created by William Schipper and Larry Swain).

“Ambrose in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture,” Old English Newsletter 27:1 (1993):  30-4 (with Jessica Wegmann).

“Ambrose” (with Jessica Wegmann and Charles D. Wright), “Coelestinus I” and “Capreolus of Carthage,” forthcoming in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, eds. Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, and Paul E. Szarmach.  Kalamazoo, MI:  Medieval Institute Publications.

Selected Recent Presentations:
“Channel Crossings:  Joseph Bosworth’s A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language in the Netherlands, 1829-1840,” The Medieval Academy Session, 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 7-11, 2008.

“The Gentleman Philologist and Lexical Nationalism: The Making of Joseph Bosworth’s 1838 A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language.”  Bibliographical Society Lecture Series.  University College London.  December, 2006.

“Benjamin Thorpe’s Influence on Joseph Bosworth’s A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Lanuage.”  Southeastern Medieval Association Conference.  University of Mississippi, October 2006.

“On Compiling A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language:  Methodological Evidence For Crafting of Entries from the Bodlelain Library Manuscripts,” 41st International Medieval Studies, Western Michigan Universith, May 2006 (Early Book Society Sponsored Session)

“Bosworth’s Books: Evidence for the Compilation of Joseph Bosworth’s Edition of A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language from the Bodleian Library Bequest,” 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May, 2004.
                                   
“An Uncaged Treasure:  The History, Travels, and Provenance of
The Carrier Library Copy of The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,” Carrier Library, James Madison University, November 15, 2001.

“Strange Bedfellows:  Thomas Northcote Toller, Joseph Bosworth, John Dee, and the Making of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Supplement,” The British Library, London, August 2001.

“Anglo-Saxon Conversion Narratives:  Research Problems and Pedagogical
Opportunities,” The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England:  Issues in Teaching and Research, The University of Glamorgan:  Christianity and the Humanities Project, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England, January 2001.

“Secularizing the Word:  Conversion and Gender in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde,” Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium:  Celebrating Chaucer in 2000:  His World, His Work, His Legacy, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, March 2000.  Respondent:  R.A. Shoaf

“Women's Experience of Conversion in Old Norse Literature,”
Modern Language Association Convention, Toronto, December 1997.

“The Conversion Stories in Ælfric's Lives of Saints,” Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture in Honor of J. E. Cross, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 1996.

“Beowulf, The Celts and the Critics,” Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, December 1995.

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