Department of Classical Studies

• Latin literature and poetics in the High Middle Ages (1000-1300)
• The classical tradition
• The intersection of literature and philosophy
• Manuscript studies

My work focuses on the literature of the European Middle Ages, with special attention to the twelfth century, an era of cultural renewal and literary innovation in Latin and in the vernacular languages of continental Europe. I am particularly interested in the way literary communities (broadly construed) develop and then display their common intellectual interests and literary influences. Some recent projects include a monograph on twelfth-century prosimetrum, a collaborative edition of an anthology of Medieval Latin verse, and a study of a piece of Augustinian wordplay that establishes a framework for medieval thought about the emotions.

• Latin Literature of the Twelfth Century
• The Secret History of Classical Texts
• Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics
• Classical Mythology

Books

Ordering Chaos: The Self and the Cosmos in Twelfth-Century Latin Prosimetrum. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

A Garland of Satire, Wisdom, and History: Latin Verse from Twelfth-Century France (Carmina Houghtoniensia). Jan Ziolkowski and Bridget Balint, coeditors. Houghton Library Studies 1. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library, 2007.

Book chapters

“Envy in the Intellectual Discourse of the High Middle Ages,” in The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, ed. Richard Newhauser. Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. 41-56.

“On the Six Wings of the Seraph”: Introduction (with Mary Carruthers) and Translation. In Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Words and Pictures. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, pp. 83-102.