Résumé Brenda Deen Schildgen Born: London, England (British-Indian; British subject/u.s. citizen) CURRENT AND PAST POSITIONS University of California, Davis Distinguished Professor, Comparative Literature, 2013 Full Professor, Comparative Literature, UC Davis, 2002 Chair, Comparative Literature Department, UC Davis, 2006 2011 Interim Director, University Writing Program, UC Davis, 2003 2005 Lecturer, Comparative Literature, UC Davis, 1988 2002 (Teaching Assistant Supervisor 1995 1998, 2003 2004) University of San Francisco Assistant and Associate Dean, Assistant Professor, English 1980 88 EDUCATION B.A. English and French, University of Wisconsin, 1965 M.A., PhD. Comparative Literature, Indiana University, 1969, 1972 Dissertation: Chaucer s Canterbury Tales and Juan Ruiz Libro de Buen Amor M.A. Religious Studies, University of San Francisco, 1989 Fields of Study European Middle Ages; Dante; Chaucer; Bible as Literature; Religion and Literature; Fairy Tales and Fables, medievalism AWARD AND HONORS UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement ($40,000 award), 2008 Bogliasco Foundation Residency Fellowship, March 2007 National Humanities Center Research Fellowship, 2005 2006 Davis Humanities Institute Research Fellowship, Winter Quarter 2004 PEW Charitable Funds Research Fellowship, 1998 1999 National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Fellowship, 1994 1995 Other awards Fifteen University Instructional Improvement Program or Teaching Assistant Development Program Support Grants (1990 2010) Academic Senate New Research Initiative Grant 2012-13. 2001 Outstanding Teacher, Academic Federation, UC Davis 1999 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book 1989 First Prize, College Theology Society National Award for Best Masters Thesis
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes grants, 1988, 1989, 1991 National Endowment for the Humanities Institutional Grant for the Master of Arts in Writing Program ($75,000), University of San Francisco, 1987 1989 Davis Humanities Institute co-sponsorship funds for conferences. PUBLICATIONS Books 2012 Divine Providence A History: Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine and Dante. New York: Continuum, 2013. (Written with the support of a PEW Grant, 1998 1999). 2013 Italian translation of Dante and the Orient. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002, published by Salerno Editrice. 2010 Arabic translation of Dante and the Orient. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002 published by The National Center for Translation, the Ministry of Culture, Egypt. 2008 Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Religious Art and Architecture in Europe. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan. 2007 Medieval Readings of Romans, co-edited with Peter Hawkins and William Campbell in the series Romans Through History and Cultures. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark International. 2006 Other Renaissances, a co-edited collection of essays with Zhou Gang and Sander Gilman. Palgrave/Macmillan. 2002 Decameron and The Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, co-editor with Leonard Michael Koff of a collection of essays. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 2002 Dante and the Orient. University of Illinois Press (Written with the support of an NEH grant). 2001 Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer s Canterbury Tales. University of Florida Press. 1999 Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark. Wayne State University Press. (Choice award for Best Academic Book, 1999). 1998 Crisis and Continuity: Time in the Gospel of Mark. Sheffield Academic Press, UK. 1997 The Rhetoric Canon: Plato to Erasmus. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. SELECTED ARTICLES 72 peer-reviewed articles (includes 15 book reviews) 199l Dante s Neologisms in the Paradiso and the Latin Rhetorical Tradition, Dante Studies (1989): 101-19. 1992 Dante s tëodia and John s alto preconio in Canto XXVI, Paradiso, Stanford Italian Review: 171-85. 1993 Petrarch s Defense of Secular Letters, the Latin Fathers, and Ancient Roman Rhetoric, Rhetorica: 119-34. 1993 Jerome s Prefaces to the Bible and The Canterbury Tales, Studies in the Age of Chaucer: 111-29. 1994 A Blind Promise: Mark s Retrieval of Esther, Poetics Today: 115-31. Augustine s Answer to Jacques Derrida in the De Doctrina Christiana, New Literary History: 383-97.
Looking East: Dante and the Indus, Dante Studies: 177-93. 1995 Wonders on the Border: Precious Stones in the Comedy, Dante Studies: 131-50. 1996 The Gospel of Mark as Myth, in Through a Glass Darkly: Essays in the Religious Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press): 3-23. 1996 Francesco Petrarca and Christian Antiquity, Rivista di Studi Italiani: 1-19. Overcoming Augustinian Dichotomies in Defense of the Laurel in Canzoni 359-360 of the Rime sparse, Modern Language Notes: 149-63. 1998 The Gospel of Mark as Picaresque Novella, Genre (1996): 297-323. 1999 Dante and the Crusades," Dante Studies (1998): 95-125. 2000 Boethius and the Consolation of Literature in Boccaccio s Decameron and Chaucer s Canterbury Tales, in The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. 102-27. 2000 "Dante e la Crociata, Verbum (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2001), 69-83. 2002 "Dante's Utopian Political Vision, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation of Pagans," Annali d Italianistica. "Islam in Boccaccio s Decameron and Chaucer s Canterbury Tales," in Alexander's Revenge, ed. Jon Ma.Asgeirsson and Nancy van Deusen (Iceland: University of Iceland Press), 209-21. 2003 Allegory, Time, and Space in the Mi c raj and its Commentary Tradition, Allegorica. 2004 "'Ceci Tuera Cela': Notre-Dame de Paris and the Murder of Monuments," Variations. 2004 Dante in India: Sri Aurobindo and Savitri, Dante Studies. 2005 No Bounds to the Sympathetic Imagination in J.M. Coetzee s Elizabeth Costello, Critical Comparative Studies 2:3. 2005 The Legacy of Erich Auerbach and Edward Said: Philology and History in the Future of Comparative Literature, Journal for Comparative and General Literature. 2006 "Sri Aurobindo: Renaissance in India and the Italian Renaissance," in Other Renaissances. 2007 "Female Monasticism in the Twelfth Century: Peter Abelard, Heloise, and Paul s Letter to the Romans," in Reception of Paul's Letter to the Romans in the Middle Ages. 2008 Middle Eastern Apocalyptic Traditions in Dante's La Divina Commedia and Mohammed's Mi c raj or night journey, at Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History. 2009 Conversion: επιστροφε and µετανοια in the Gospel of Mark. Journal of Jewish History 23:1-16. 2009 Philosophers, Theologians, and the Islamic Legacy in Dante: Inferno 4 versus Paradiso 4, for Special Issue of Dante Studies dedicated to Dante and Islam, ed. Jan Ziolkowski. 113-132. 2010 Poetry and Theology in the Fourteenth Century, Religion and Literature. 2010 Rept. The East in the Latin World, from Dante and the Orient, in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Volume 115 (CMLC-115), ed. Jelena Krstovic (December, 2009), inhardcover, e-book, and dial-up on-line version. 2010 Animals, Poetry and Philosophy, and Dante's Commedia, Modern Philology. 2010 Rept. Dante and the Crusades, from Dante and the Orient, in Poetry Criticism 108. 2010 Gabriele Paleotti and the Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, in Sacred Possessions, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer and Gail Feigenbaum (Getty Research Institute,
2010), based on the conference Sacred Possessions? Italy and Collecting Religious Art, 1500-1900, co-organized by the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Getty Research Institute (GRI), and held at the American Academy in Rome, June 19-21, 2007. 2010 Thomas More and the Defense of Images in the Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Moreana 47 (Dec., 2010), 9-30. 2011 Dante for contemporary satire: Sean Meredith s Dante s Inferno and Jean-Luc Godard s Notre Musique, Rivista di Studi Italiani. 2012 Reception of Dante in Nineteenth-Century India, in Dante in the "Long" 19th century (1789-1914), ed. Aida Audeh and Nick Havely (Oxford University Press). 2013 Reception, Elegy, and Eco-Awareness:Trees in Statius, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Journal of Comparative Literature. Selected Invited Talks 2000 2009 (Approximately 80 invited or conference talks 1985 2011) 2009, February 28, Dante s Commedia, at Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, Stanford Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford Humanities Center. 2009, January 30, Fairy Tales and the Arts, aired on Insight, KXJZ, Capital Public Radio, Sacramento. 2008, November 7-8, Making the French Nation: Liberating France, Abbé Grégoire, and the Patrimony of the Middle Ages at Medievalism, Colonialism, Nationalism: A Symposium, at UC, Riverside (Sponsored Mellon Workshop on Medieval Cultures). 2008, October 10-12, Christian Poetics: Dante, Prophecy, and the Urgency of Time, Plenary Address at Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Villanova University. 2008, March Dante in India, at Tra Amici: A Symposium in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta, Mary Washington University, Fredericksburg, VA. 2007, June, Gabriele Paleotti and the Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane at Sacred Possessions Italy and Collecting Religious Art, American Academy in Rome (sponsored by The Getty Research Institute and The Bibliotheca Hertziana Max-Planck- Institut für Kuntsgeschichte, Rome. 2004, May, Dante, the Middle East, and India, Dante Society of America, annual meeting, Harvard. 2001 Deschamps Ballade to Chaucer and Late Medieval Humanism. Medieval Studies Forum, University of California, Berkeley. 2001, May, "Chaucer, Pagan Philosophy, and the Ethical Debate in the Canterbury Tales," UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Medieval History Seminar, Huntington Library. TEACHING UC Davis, Summer Abroad, Florence, 2002- (Every summer teach Renaissance Florence and the Birth of Modern Europe) 2002, Professor, Comparative Literature, U.C., Davis Courses taught: Comp. Lit: Medieval Literature, Great Books (Ancient World; Middle Ages to Enlightenment; the Modern Crisis); Myths and Legends; Literature of the Indian Sub-Continent; Fairy Tales, Fables, and Parables; African Literature; Colonial and Postcolonial Literature; History and Literature; Teaching Internship for Graduate Students; Dante. Graduate courses in Dante; Allegory; Reception
of Virgil; Augustinian Tradition. English: Bible as Literature; Chaucer. Italian: Dante, Survey of Italian Literature Humanities: Dante Religious Studies: Myth, Ritual, and Symbol Medieval Studies: The High Middle Ages: 1066-Dante; 14th-15th Centuries; Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in the Middle Ages. Davis Honors Challenge Program: 1998 (Comp. Lit. 2); 2001 (Comp. Lit. 1); 2002 (Comp. Lit. 2); 2008 (Comp. Lit. 6 (honors); 2009, 2010, Comp. Lit. 5 (honors) Freshman Seminar: Non-Violence; Apocalyptic Novels; Science and Religion. ADMINISTRATION 2006-11 Director and Chair, Comparative Literature 2003-05 Interim Director, University Writing Program, UC, Davis 1987 89 Project Director, $75,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Institutional Grant supporting the M.A. in Writing, U.S.F. 1987 1988 Assistant Dean, Arts and Sciences, University of San Francisco. 1986 88 Founder and Director, Masters of Arts in Writing Program, University of San Francisco. 1980 1988 Director, Expository Writing Program, Arts and Sciences; Writing Program, College of Professional Studies, University of San Francisco. PROFESSIONAL SERVICE NEH external consultant to University of Nevada, Reno; Councilor Dante Society of America; Secretary and Editor of Chronica, Medieval Association of the Pacific; numerous peer-reviews for faculty appointments and promotion (Yale, Hong Kong University, Michigan, Pomona, Santa Clara University, Vanderbilt); manuscript reviews for University of Toronto Press, University of Florida Press, MLA, Fordham University Press, Palgrave/Macmillan, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Stanford University; Modern Philology, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, Chaucer Review, Writing on the Edge. Fellowship reviewer for Israel Science Foundation, Stanford Humanities Center, National Humanities Center.