FACULTY

Gail Orgelfinger

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Gail Orgelfinger is Senior Lecturer in English. She received a B.A. in English from The George Washington University, graduating With Distinction, With Departmental Honors, and Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, specializing in English and French medieval literature. Her dissertation, published by Garland Medieval Texts, was an edition of The Hystorye of Olyuer of Castylle (New York: Garland, 1988). She received an NEH grant to study "Lay Life in the Middle Ages" at Indiana University, developing an interest in chivalric narrative. She is a Founding Member of the International Joan of Arc Society and is writing a monograph on English reception of the saint. At UMBC, she is actively involved with the English Honors Program and the Honors College, which named her its 1998-99 Teacher of the Year and a 2008-2010 Faculty Fellow.

Her article, "J.K. Rowling's Medieval Bestiary," is forthcoming in Studies in Medievalism XVII (2009), and she is currently editing a collection of essays on J.K. Rowling's Medievalism for the Edwin Mellen Press. Her article "Carl Dreyer´s Passion Play in La Passion de Jeanne d´Arc and Jesus," appeared in the Film & History CD-ROM Annual, 2003. With Robin Farabaugh she has written "Words of Conviction: Trial Narratives & Testimony of Anne Askew & Joan of Arc," in Margaret Mikesell, Adele F. Seeff, & Linda L. Lowery, eds., Culture & Change: Attending to Early Modern Women (Associated Universities Presses, 2003). She is a past contributor to the Baltimore Opera Study Guide and has written program notes for Otello.