Julie Wilson
Teaching Scholar, English
- Office
- 233 Decio Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5639 - jwilso47@nd.edu
Research and teaching interests
Old and Middle English, books as physical objects (bibliography), late nineteenth-century America, reception history of medieval texts, English Renaissance drama.
Biography
Julie Wilson is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Her academic focus has shifted between texts over the years, jumping from Beowulf to Shakespeare’s history plays to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur before landing back at Beowulf. In all the texts she examines, however, she seeks the answer the same questions: How and why do texts reference, recreate, and reveal the past? What role does a knowledge of the past have in these texts, such as a remembrance of historical figures in order to define kingship, or a recollection of previous lines of poetry in order to create alliteration or rhyme? Why is the regurgitation of this knowledge significant?
Her current research interest lies in the print history of Beowulf in the postbellum United States. From the early nineteenth century to the present, most readers have interacted with the poem as a printed text, not as a manuscript, yet few if any scholars have studied Beowulf as a physical object. By examining this obscure history, Julie hopes to demonstrate how Old English spread across the globe, how the Old English texts were printed and distributed, who actually read these texts, and how this information affects our current literary and political understanding of Old English today.