Joey McMullen

Joey McMullen

he/him/his

Assistant Professor, English

Education

  • Ph.D., Harvard University, 2015
  • A.M., Harvard University, 2011
  • B.A., Bucknell University, 2009

About Joey McMullen

My research employs ecological criticism and the study of place to highlight the role of the landscape in the literature of the medieval North Atlantic, especially that of England, Ireland, and Wales. I am also broadly interested in multilingualism and networks of literary exchange within the British Isles. My other research and teaching interests include the digital humanities (deep mapping, in particular), the history of the English language, American minimalism, and young adult fantasy literature.

I am currently writing a book that traces the cultural interplay between Irish and Old English literary landscapes. Combining an ecocritical approach to reading the landscape with a comparatist perspective, my study shows that the landscape and the natural world can reveal paths of literary influence. By exploring these connections, I reconsider the transmission of influence between early medieval England and Ireland, while also challenging the construction of “Englishness” in the texts I study (arguing instead that the British Isles must be thought of as a multilingual zone of exchange).

Journal Articles and Other Publications

Selected Articles

  • “Rethinking Ripon: Cuthbert’s Tonsure and Northumbrian Ecclesiastical Geography,” Northern History 60.2 (2023): 250-261.
  • “Merlin’s Woodland House: Irish Cosmology in the Vita Merlini?” with Jennifer Lopatin, Arthurian Literature XXXVIII (2023): 302-312.
  • “del cigne firent messager: Swan as llatai in Marie de France’s Milun,” with L. A. Brannelly and Jennifer Lopatin, Romance Notes 62.3 (2022): 539-49.
  • “Literary Landscapes and Cultural Exchange in the Early Medieval North Atlantic,” Viator 51.1 (2020): 23-34.
  • “Tamar, Widowhood, and the Old English Prose Translation of Genesis,” with Chelsea Shields-Más, Anglia 138.4 (2020): 586-617.
  • “Fragmentation and Wholeness in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 16,” in Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, ed. Benjamin Albritton, Georgia Henley, and Elaine Treharne (London: Routledge, 2020), 131-141.
  • “Reading Boethius in Medieval England: The Consolation of Philosophy from Alfred to Ashby,” with Erica Weaver, in The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England: The Consolation and its Afterlives, ed. A. Joseph McMullen and Erica Weaver (Tempe: ACMRS, 2018), ix-xxxii.
  • “Nature, Astronomy, and Cosmology in Chaucer’s Boece,” in The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England: The Consolation and its Afterlives, ed. A. Joseph McMullen and Erica Weaver (Tempe: ACMRS, 2018), 143-154.
  • “Gerald of Wales: Interpretation and Innovation in Medieval Britain,” with Georgia Henley, in Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a Medieval Writer and Critic, ed. Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018), 1-16.
  • “Locating Place and Landscape in Early Insular Literature,” with Kristen J. Carella, The Journal of Literary Onomastics 6 (2017): 1-10.
  • “Re-locating Sacred Space: Creating Place through Nature Miracles in Early Irish Hagiography,” in Espace sacré, mémoire sacrée: Le culte des évêques dans leurs villes, IVe-XXe siècle, ed. Christine Bousquet-Labouérie and Yossi Maurey (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 243-58.
  • “Rewriting the Ecclesiastical Landscape of Early Medieval Northumbria in the Lives of Cuthbert,” Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014): 57-98.
  • “‘Forr þeʒʒre sawle need’: The Ormulum, Vernacular Theology, and a Tradition of Translation in Early England,” English Studies 95.3 (2014): 256-277.
  • “Boethius at Harvard: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Houghton Library, 1200 – 1800,” with Erica Weaver, Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society 23 (2014): 69-97.
  • “The Communication of Culture: Speech and the ‘Grail’ Procession in Historia Peredur vab Efrawc,” Arthuriana 23.3 (2013): 26-44.
  • “Improper Requests and Unjust Satire: Problems with the Field of Cultural Production in Tromdám Guaire,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 32 (2012): 198-213.
  • “Enwau ac Anryfeddodau Ynys Prydain and a Tradition of Topographical Wonders in Medieval Britain,” Studia Celtica Fennica IX (2012): 36-53.
  • “Three Major Forts to be Built for Her: Rewriting History through the Landscape in Breuddwyd Maxen Wledig,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 31 (2011): 225-41.

Journal Issues

  • The Journal of Literary Onomastics 6 (2017). Special issue on place and place-names in the early insular world. Edited with Kristen J. Carella.
  • Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society 23 (2014). Special issue on the medieval afterlife of Boethius on the Continent. Edited with Erica Weaver.
  • Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 31 (2011). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Edited with Deborah Furchtgott, Matthew Holmberg, and Natasha Sumner.
  • Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 30 (2010). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Edited with Erin Boon and Natasha Sumner.