Michael Van Dussen

 Michael Van Dussen
Contact Information
Email address: 
michael.vandussen [at] mcgill.ca
Address: 

Arts 380
Arts Building
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC H3A 0G5
Canada

Group: 
Faculty Members
Position: 
Professor
Stream: 
Literature
Specialization by geographical area: 
Great Britain
Europe
Specialization by time period: 
Medieval & Middle English
Area(s): 
Fiction
Poetry & Poetics
Archives & Bibliography
Book History
Status: 
On Sabbatical
Areas of interest: 

Middle English literature (14th and 15th centuries); the global Middle Ages; manuscript studies; book history; communication before print; medieval encyclopedias, florilegia, and commonplace books; medieval travel writing; late-medieval English and Latin literature; late-medieval religious controversy (esp. the Wycliffite and Hussite controversies); literature and law; the history of mnemonics; medieval religious controversy; medieval drama; England and Eastern Europe; Richard Rolle.

Biography: 

Michael Van Dussen is the Director of the Lollard Society. He is currently conducting research on reformist encyclopedias, particularly manuscripts of the Wycliffite Floretum and Rosarium and their circulation in England and Bohemia (14th and 15th centuries). He is also a member of the Global Pasts Research Group, supported by McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre: Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds.

Degree(s): 

M.A., Ph.D. (Ohio State University)
B.A. (Ohio Wesleyan University)

Selected publications: 

Books

     

Richard Rolle: On Lamentations. A Critical Edition with Translation and Commentary. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool University Press, 2020).

A Companion to the Hussites (ed. with Pavel Soukup). Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

Europe After Wyclif (ed. with J. Patrick Hornbeck II) (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).

The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches (ed. with Michael Johnston) (Cambridge University Press, 2015; paperback 2017).

Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378-1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership (ed. with Pavel Soukup) (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013).

From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2012; paperback 2014).

Articles

"Recommended Reading: Richard Rolle in Bohemia." In Peter Brown and Jan Čermák, eds., England and Bohemia in the Age of Chaucer (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2023), 39-54.

Thomas Gascoigne on the Jews and the Apocalypse. In Richard Firth Green and Robert F. Yeager, eds., “Of latine and of othire lare”: Essays in Honour of David R. Carlson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2022), 224-44.

"Thomas Gascoigne's Research on Central Europe c. 1456." In Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, eds., Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360-1460 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2021), 299-318.

(with Pavel Soukup) "Hussite Histories." In Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, eds., A Companion to the Hussites. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 1-22.

"Things." In Peter Brown, ed., A New Companion to Chaucer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2019), 475-486.

"Richard Rolle's Latin Psalter in Central European Manuscripts." Medium Aevum 87 (2018): 41-71.

(with J. Patrick Hornbeck II) "The Europe of Wycliffism." In J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael Van Dussen, eds., Europe After Wyclif (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 1-10.

(with Michael Johnston) "Manuscripts and Cultural History." In Michael Johnston and Michael Van Dussen, eds., The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1-16.

"Tourists and Tabulae in Late-Medieval England." In Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds., Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2015), 238-254.

"A Late Medieval Itinerary to England." Mediaeval Studies 76 (2014): 275-296.

"Mezi Anglií a Čechami: Preláti v Římě a šíření anglických kontemplativních textů." In Heresis seminaria. Pojmy a koncepty v bádání o husitství, edited by Pavlína Rychterová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Filosofia, 2013), 49-73.

(with Pavel Soukup) Textual Controversies, Textual Communities.” In Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, eds., Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378-1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), 1-15.

Aristotle’s Tetragon: Compilation and Consensus during the Great Schism.” In Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, eds., Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378-1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), 187-210.

Parsing the Peacock: Langland’s Wills and the Limits of Voluntas.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 25 (2011): 77-94.

"Three Verse Eulogies of Anne of Bohemia." Medium Aevum 78 (2009): 231-260.

"Bohemia in English Religious Controversy before the Henrician Reformation." The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 7 (2009): 42-60.

"Conveying Heresy: 'a certayne student' and the Lollard-Hussite Fellowship." Viator 38 (2007): 217-234.

"Betokening Chastity: Margery Kempe's Sartorial Crisis." Forum for Modern Language Studies 41 (2005): 275-288.

Awards, honours, and fellowships: 
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant for the project: "Pre-Modern Research and the Social Life of Reformist Texts: the Wycliffite Floretum," 2023-2028
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Development Grant for the project: "Pre-Modern Research and the Social Life of Information: the Wycliffite Floretum," 2022
  • Fellow, Centrum medievistických studií (Centre for Medieval Studies), Prague, Elected 2021
  • Faculty of Arts Award for Distinction in Research, 2019
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Insight Grant for the project: "English Encyclopedism and European Manuscript Culture in the Later Middle Ages," 2016-2021
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Insight Development Grant for the project: "Collecting and Curiosity before Print: The Idea of the Archive in Fifteenth-Century England,” 2013-2015
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Connection Grant for the "Europe after Wyclif" international conference (a joint McGill-Fordham endeavor, organized by Michael Van Dussen and J. Patrick Hornbeck II, held at Fordham University from 4-6 June 2014)
  • Louis A. Dudek Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2014
  • Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), Établissement de nouveaux professeurs‐chercheurs grant for the project: “Crise et contact: controverse et communication religieuses avant la découverte de l'impression, 1378‐1417,” 2011-2014
Taught previously at: 

Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA)
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH)

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