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Teaching

My teaching experience encompasses Old English language and literature, Middle and Renaissance English literature, manuscript studies, book history, text encoding, medieval scribal practices, and the representation of medieval manuscripts online. 

I incorporate both traditional and digital methodologies in my teaching for postgraduate courses in order to prepare the next generation of scholars for the interdisciplinary demands of manuscript research in the digital age. As part of the postgraduate module Digital Arts and Humanities Research Institute at University College Cork (2014-2018), I delivered lectures to students on a range of topics including the technological shift from manuscript to print culture as well as the challenges of encoding the mise-en-page of marginalia-bearing manuscripts such as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41. In 2018, I was invited to deliver a lecture on the palaeographical issues and editorial challenges in transcribing, editing, and encoding the central and marginal texts of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41 as part of the Palaeography and Manuscript-based Research module at University College Cork. I designed teaching materials such as handouts and transcription guides to assist the postgraduate students in differentiating between the different scripts used in early medieval English texts, as well as identifying Old English characters and common abbreviation symbols. 

I have extensive experience in delivering engaging tutorials and classes on Old, Middle, and Renaissance English Literature for undergraduate courses. I designed several interactive online quizzes to test student knowledge and to increase engagement with the course material. As a Medieval English Literature tutor at University College Cork, I provided classes and tutorials as part of several modules which sought to develop an awareness of the history of writing in the English language across its main periods: 

  • Literature and Society – I encouraged the development of critical thinking skills through close readings of key passages from set Old, Middle, and Renaissance English literary texts
  • Contexts: The Production and Reception of Literature and Film – I promoted the student-led exploration of medieval manuscript culture as well as the relationship between theatre and audience in texts and dramas from the early modern period
  • Old English Language and Literature – I enabled students to achieve reading fluency in the Old English language through reading and translation exercises.

More recently, I designed and delivered classes and tutorials as part of the undergraduate courses at the Faculty of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. As part of Preliminary Paper 2: Early Medieval Literature 650 to 1350, I taught the fundamental principles of Old English poetry through close readings of set literary texts to first-year undergraduate students. For Course II, Paper 1: Literature in English from 650-1100, I introduced Final Honour School (FHS) students to a broad range of research areas within Old English literature including manuscript context (The Vercelli Book and The Exeter Book), wisdom literature (Charms, Riddles, Maxims), gender (heroic literature, biblical narratives and saints’ lives), and Old English prose (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old English Orosius).

Examining manuscripts in the Boole Library’s Special Collections during the Texts and Contexts MA
Alfred’s Æstal or The Alfred Jewel
A scribe at work on a manuscript
Polyglot Bible
Disintegrating book
Painted book spines
A handwritten vellum manuscript in Latin from the Wyse Collection in the Boole Library’s Special Collections. It is a decree dated 20th July 1471, from a provincial synod of Cashel against Cormac MacCarthy for damages to a monastery at Balynllegan.
Beowulf displaying Grendel’s mother’s head. Without monsters the hero has no socially acceptable forum for his power and therefore no other role that society would deem valuable.
Painted book spines
A woman mixing water into wine was a standard allegory of Temperance in European iconography. Temperance is defined by control over excess and characterised by self restraint.
Painted book spines
Spenser depicted Queen Elizabeth I as a figure of frozen sexuality and lack of genealogy.
Painted book spines
Painted book spines
The Friar’s Tale
Painted book spines
Portrait of Edmund Spenser, English Renaissance poet and author of “The Fairie Queene”.
The Regensburg Fragment: A twelfth-century litany of saints produced by Irish monks working on the Continent.
The frontispiece of “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser published in 1590.
For an early medieval English audience allusions to carrion creatures specifically, Ravens, Eagles and Wolves functioned as portents of impending doom.
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The hall in Old English literature can be interpreted as a social and cultural microcosm for civilization.
The Canterbury Tales
The Gutenburg Bible
Image source: Parker Library on the Web.
CCCC 178 p.173
The Knights of the Round Table and the Apparition of the Holy Grail
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the Pearl Manuscript
Christine de Pisan presenting her volume to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria (BL Harley 4431).
The Luttrell Psalter
Evidence of old MS being used as binding
Image source: Parker Library on the Web
CCCC 178 p.173
The knyghtes tale
Painted Flowers Book Spines
Grendel: The monster’s body provided safe spaces to express the customs and practices that were forbidden and prohibited within society.
Cædmon
Monsters inhabited the marginal uninhabited regions of society, much like they decorate the margins of the Bayeaux Tapestry.
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