Shannon Gayk (Email; phone 812-855-5546)
Assistant Professor
PhD: University of Notre Dame, 2005
MA: University of Notre Dame, 2004
BA: Duke University, 1998

Shannon Gayk joined the department of English at Indiana University in 2005 after completing her doctoral work at the University of Notre Dame. She is particularly interested in the relationship between religion, visual cultures, and literature. She is currently completing a book on religious art, vernacular literature, and reformist theologies in fifteenth-century England. She has presented and published papers on John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, Piers Plowman, Lollard writing, and sermon literature.

Her courses also explore the relationships between visual experience, images and texts, aesthetics and theology. Recent undergraduate courses include: “Holy Grails: Literature and the Religious Object in Early England” (L383), Chaucer (L305), Literary Masterpieces (L213), and Literatures in English to 1600 with the special topic: “Literary Visions: Sacred and Profane”(E301).

PARTIAL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Journal Articles:
“Images of Pity: The Regulatory Aesthetics of John Lydgate’s Religious Poetry” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 175-203.

“‘As Plouзmen han preued’: The Alliterative Work of a Set of Lollard Sermons” Yearbook of Langland Studies 20 (forthcoming)

“John Lydgate” in the International Encyclopedia for The Middle Ages – Online (Brepols, 2006)

Work in Progress:
Reformations of the Image in Fifteenth-Century Religious Literature. Book Manuscript.

“‘Among psalms to fynde a cleer sentence’: The Psalm Commentaries of John Lydgate and Eleanor Hull.’ Article manuscript.

“On the nature of things: Object Lessons in Trevisa’s De Proprietatibus Rerum.” Article manuscript.

Recent and Upcoming Presentations and Lectures:
“Teaching Chaucer's Legacy: Continuations, Revisions, and Adaptations," TEAMS Session, 42 nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, (upcoming) May 2007.

“‘To tilie truthe’: Preaching and Plowing in Piers Plowman and ‘The Sermon of Dead Men,’” Piers Plowman Conference, (upcoming) May 2007.

“Reformations of the Image: Lollard Texts and Visual Culture,” 2006 Inaugural Lecture for the Medieval Studies Program at Indiana University, September 2006.

 “Among psalms to fynde a cleer sentence”: The Psalmody of John Lydgate and Eleanor Hull,” New Chaucer Society Conference, New York, July 2006

“‘Thow thei yow calle Lollard’: Lollardy and Reformist Hagiography in John Capgrave’s Life of Saint Katherine,” Lollard Society Session, International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2006.

“The Aesthetics of Ineffability,” MLA Annual Convention, Washington, DC, December 2005

“Preaching the libri laicorum: Lollard Sermons and the Image Debates,” Lollard Society Session, 40 th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2005.

“‘Sensible Signes:’ Reginald Pecock, Images, and the Vernacular Rhetorics of Sense,” Lollardpalooza (the North American Conference of the Lollard Society), University of Nebraska at Lincoln, March 2005