Overview

Faculty

Majors

Courses

Activities & Opportunities

Resources

 

 

 


Jane Beal


Visiting Assistant Professor
On faculty since 2004

Office: 125 Blanchard Hall
630.752.7102
Jane.Beal@wheaton.edu

 
Education

Ph.D. in English, University of California, Davis

M.A. in English, Sonoma State University

B.A. in English, Sonoma State University

Additional coursework completed at the University of California, Berkeley in medieval literature, at the University of Notre Dame in Latin and paleography, and at Wheaton College in biblical Hebrew.

 
Professional and Personal Interests

As a scholar and teacher, my professional interests include medieval literature, the literature of the Bible, and classical mythology.  As a creative writer, I compose memoir, fantasy, and poetry.  See thepoetryplace.wordpress.com.  As Gweneth Paltrow says when playing in “Shakespeare in Love” … “I must have poetry in my life!”

As a Christian minister and missionary, I pray for an end to sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking world-wide, and I am working with others toward this goal through a ministry called JSASSN.   I am also an advocate for Compassion International, a child-sponsorship organization “releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.”  Check out www.compassion.com.  I am a member of Church of the Savior, where I enjoy making music, preaching sermons, and serving children.  See friendsofthesavior.org or just come visit any Saturday evening. 

Last but certainly not least, I am delighted to advise wheatonIMPROV at Wheaton College.  See www.wheatonimprov.com.

 
Courses Taught

Visiting Assistant Professor at Wheaton College

ENGL 101 - Classics of Western Literature
ENGL 102 - Literature of the Modern World (theme: Redemption)
ENGW 103 – Composition and Research (4 hrs.) (theme: History, Memory, and Identity)
ENGW 104 – Composition and Research (2 hrs.) (theme: Ethical Challenges in English)
ENGL 215 - Classical and Early British Literature
ENGW 251 - Writing for Educators
ENG 271 - History of the English Language
ENG 495 Memoir Composition and Performance (special studies with Brendon Culhane)
HNGR 495 Orphans and Sex Trafficking in Moldova (special studies with Rachel Wathen)

*Class devotional series: Hearing God’s Voice, the Healing Power of God, Growing in Faith, Redemption, Waiting on the LORD, Encountering God, Trusting God

Sole Instructor at UC Davis
English 1 - Expository Writing – Ethics (Computer-Aided Instruction)
English 3 - Introduction to Literature – The Bible and Literature
English 42 - Approaches to Reading
English 101 - Advanced Composition – History, Memory, & Identity
English 104D - Writing in the Professions:  Elementary & Secondary Education

Teaching Assistant at UC Davis
English 111 - Medieval English Literature – Romances
English 113A - Chaucer:  Troilus and the Minor Poems
English 113B - Chaucer:  The Canterbury Tales
English 150A - British Drama to 1800

Co-Instructor (teaching one section of a multi-section class at UCD)
Comparative Literature 5 - Fables, Fairy-Tales, and Parables
Political Science 192W - Washington Center Research Project
Religious Studies 40 - New Testament

Teaching Assistant at Sonoma State University
English 99T - English Tutoring
English 101 - College Composition
English 448 - Medieval Literature
English 313 - Classical Literature
Philosophy 302 - Ethics:  Religion in Modern Culture

 

 
Membership in Professional Societies

Medieval Academy of America (www.medievalacademy.org)
Medieval Association of the Pacific (medieval.ucdavis.edu/map)
Medieval Chronicle Society
Pearl-Poet Society
Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (www.gustavus.edu/groups/ssbma)
       President, 2007-2008
       Vice-President, 2006-2007

 
Research
My literary research is in the fields of medieval literature, classical mythology, and the literature of the Bible.  In my work on the exquisitely beautiful, fourteenth-century Pearl, I am discovering how the memory of trauma affects the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical interpretations of the poem.  Concurrently, I am collaborating with other scholars on a project about the reception of Moses among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.  I continue to write about the life and works of John Trevisa, a late-medieval priest and scholar who translated numerous works from Latin into English. I am particularly interested in Trevisa's English Polychronicon, a medieval history book originally compiled by Ranulf Higden, and its reception in late-medieval and early modern England.
 
Recent Publications and/or Presentations

Books (IN-PROGRESS):

Sanctuary (completed chapbook of poetry ~ under contract and forthcoming from FinishingLinePress)

Translating the Past: Essays on Medieval Literature in Honor of Marijane Osborn, co-edited with Mark Bradshaw Busbee (Arizona Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, under contract and forthcoming) (collection of essays ~ in-progress)

Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception (collection of essays ~ in-progress for Brill)

John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon (completed academic book ~ under review with Boydell and Brewer)

The Pearl-Maiden and the Memory of Trauma (academic book ~ in-progress)

Ni Jalena:  A Medieval Romance (completed fantasy novel ~ under revision)

Hearing God’s Voice (devotional book ~ under revision)

Articles:

“Queen Elizabeth I,” British Writers’ Supplement, ed. Jay Parini (Charles Scribner’s Sons, An Imprint of the Gale Group, forthcoming).

 “Why Authority? Trevisa, Translation, and the Audience of the English Polychronicon,” Medieval Authorship, ed. Stephen Partridge (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).

 “Translating Caedmon’s Miracle in the Chronicles of the Venerable Bede, Ranulf Higden, and John Trevisa,” Translating the Past: Essays on Medieval Literature in Honor of Marijane Osborn, eds. Jane Beal and Mark Bradshaw Busbee (AMRTS, forthcoming 2009).

 “Moses as a Model for Medieval Contemplative Devotional Practices:  Lectio divina, Holy Pilgrimage, and the Biblia pauperum,” Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception, ed. Jane Beal (Brill, forthcoming).

“Julian of Norwich,” British Writers’ Supplement 12, ed. Jay Parini (Charles Scribner’s Sons, An Imprint of the Gale Group, 2006), 149-66.

“Margery Kempe,” British Writers’ Supplement 12, ed. Jay Parini (Charles Scribner’s Sons, An Imprint of the Gale Group, 2006), 167-83.

“Mapping Identity in John Trevisa’s English Polychronicon:  Chester, Cornwall, and the Translation of English National History,” Fourteenth-Century England, Vol. III, ed. William Mark Ormrod (Boydell and Brewer, 2004), 67-82.

“John Trevisa,” British Writers’ Supplement 9, ed. Jay Parini (Charles Scribner’s Sons, An Imprint of the Gale Group, 2003).

“Jonathan Edwards,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Vol. I, ed. Jay Parini (Oxford University Press, 2003), 432-41.

“The Pearl-Maiden’s Two Lovers,” Studies in Philology 100:1 (Winter 2003), 1-21.
             *Available at http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/studies_in_philology/v100/100.1beal.pdf.

Poetry:

Sanctuary (Georgetown, KY, Finishing Line Press, forthcoming).

“Crimson Leaves,” Nota Bene (Davis, 2002).

“1154 Hillside Drive,” Alexandria Lives Poets’ Society Anthology (Alexandria, 2000).

“One in the Tribe of Diana,” Qasida (Sonoma, 1995).

“The Romance of Nimue and the Wizard Merlin,” Qasida (Sonoma, 1995).

“Three Poems,” Orbit du Novo (Sonoma, 1993), 28.

Academic Encyclopedia Entries, Introductions, and Short Essays

“John Trevisa,” “Ranulf Higden,” “Geoffrey of Monmouth,” “History of the Old Testament,” and “The Chronicle of Huntingdon,” Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (Brill, forthcoming in 2008).

“Some Contributions to Middle English Lexicography” and “Joan Turville-Petre,” J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael Drout (Routledge Press, 2006).

“Geoffrey of Monmouth,” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1, ed. Joseph Black, et al. (Broadview Press, 2006). [unsigned introduction]

“Medieval Books for Young Readers,” Medieval Academy News (February 2001), 15.

Reviews:

Review of A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture: 1350-1500  edited by Peter Brown, Modern Philology (forthcoming).

Review of Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000-1534 by Kathy Lavezzo, The Sixteenth-Century Journal (forthcoming)

Review of Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England by Chris Given-Wilson, The Sixteenth-Century Journal (forthcoming)

Review of Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period edited by Carmine G. Di Biase, The Sixteenth-Century Journal (forthcoming)

Review of Autobiography and Gender in the Early Modern Period by Sharon Cadman Seelig, The Sixteenth-Century Journal XXXVIII/4 (2007), 1103-04.

Review of The Idea of Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the Fourteenth Century by Donnalee Dox, The Sixteenth-Century Journal XXXVII/3 (2006), 906-07.

Review of Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography: Authority, Power, and the Self in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Spain by Elena Carrera, The Sixteenth-Century Journal XXXVII/4 (2006), 1165-67.