- Department, Office, or School
- Department of English
- Professor
- emailbhawk@ric.edu
- phone401-456-8675
- location_onCraig-Lee Hall, 149
With a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Connecticut (2014), I joined the RIC English Department in 2015. My fields of expertise are Old and Middle English, Old Norse, history of the English language, digital humanities, the Bible as/in literature, translation, and the history of the book. Most of my interests in research and teaching encompass what might be called transmission studies: the afterlives of texts, including circulation, translations, adaptations, and representations in various cultures and media.
My first book, Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2018, and my second book, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary, was published by Cascade Books in 2019. In 2021, I published Apocrypha for Beginners: A Guide to Understanding and Exploring Scriptures Beyond the Bible with Rockridge Press.
I also work on pop culture uses of the Middle Ages and religion. I’ve written a variety of pieces for my website, The Public Medievalist, Forces of Geek, the Washington Post, and The Conversation. I’ve especially focused some of this work on Star Wars. I’ve recently collaborated with Dot Porter at the University of Pennsylvania on a series of videos titled Sacred Texts: Codices Far, Far Away–all about the connections between Star Wars and medieval manuscripts. You can see more about the series here, and you can find the playlist for the videos here.
You can learn more about me on my website and blog about teaching and research at http://brandonwhawk.net.
Education
B.A., Houghton College
M.A., University of Connecticut
Ph.D., University of Connecticut
Selected Publications
“Biblical Apocrypha as Medieval World Literature,” The Medieval Globe 6.2 (2020): 49-83.
“Versions of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew in Early England,” Philological Quarterly 99 (2020): 245-67.
“Apocrypha and Fictionality,” invited contribution to a forum on “Medieval Fictionalities,” New Literary History 51 (2020): 253-57.
“A History of the Study of Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England,” forthcoming in Bulletin for the Study of Religion.
“Modelling Medieval Hands: Practical OCR for Caroline Minuscule,” co-authored with Antonia Karaisl and Nick White, forthcoming in Digital Humanities Quarterly.
“Prosthesis: From Grammar to Medicine in the Earliest History of the Word,” Disability Studies Quarterly 38.4 (2018): open access here.
“The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Rule of the Master, and the Rule of Benedict,” Revue Bénédictine 128.2 (2018): 281-93.
“The Fifteen Signs before Judgment in Anglo-Saxon England: A Reassessment,” JEGP 117 (2018): 443-57.
“The Literary Contexts and Early Transmission of the Latin Life of Judas,” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 44 (2018): 60-76.
“Ælfric’s Genesis and Bede’s Commentarius in Genesim,” Medium Ævum 85 (2016): 208-16.
“Psalm 151 in Anglo-Saxon England,” Review of English Studies n.s. 66 (2015): 805-21.
See more about my publications here.
Books
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary, Early Christian Apocrypha Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, forthcoming).
Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 30 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).
Apocrypha for Beginners: A Guide to Understanding and Exploring Scriptures Beyond the Bible (Emeryville, CA: Rockridge Press, 2021).
Courses
ENGL 120 Studies in Literature and Identity
ENGL 121 Studies in Literature and Nation
ENGL 122 Studies in Literature and the Canon
ENGL 123 Studies in Literature and Genre
ENGL 200 Reading Literature and Culture
ENGL 205 British Literature to 1700
ENGL 347 Literatures of Medieval Britain
ENGL 345 Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies
ENGL 346 Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances
ENGL 432 Studies in the English Language
ENGL 460 Seminar in Major Authors & Themes: Medieval Multimedia
ENGL 501 Introduction to Graduate Study
ENGL 530 Topics in British Literature before 1660: Medieval Multimedia