Lecture: “Was Geoffrey Chaucer “every Woman’s Friend”? and Why Does It Matter?”
Date: Thursday, May 22
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Venue: TBD
Kathryn L. Lynch is the Katharine Lee Bates and Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English at Wellesley College. From 2010-2017, she served as Dean of Faculty Affairs, with a broad portfolio of departments in the arts and humanities, and from 2018-2020, she was Director of the Wellesley College Freedom Project. She received her B.A. from Stanford University (majoring in English and Classics) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in English Language and Literature. Her scholarly specialty is medieval English literature, especially the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. She is the author of two books (The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form [Stanford, 1988] and Chaucer’s Philosophical Visions [D.S. Brewer, 2000]), and is the editor of two others (Chaucer’s Cultural Geography [Routledge, 2002] and Dream Visions and Other Poems [a Norton Critical Edition, 2007]. Her edition of the dream-visions is the standard version now used by The Norton Chaucer (2019). She has also written numerous articles and book reviews on medieval topics, which have appeared in journals like Speculum, The Chaucer Review, and Studies in the Age of Chaucer, as well as opinion pieces on issues of importance in higher education for publications such as The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. She is currently writing about the representation of food in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and experimenting with some new modes of writing.
Seminar: Two of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: the Wife of Bath’s and Shipman’s Tales
Date: Thursday, May 24
Time: 10:30pm – 12:30pm
Venue: TBD
Registration for the seminar with Kathryn Lynch is free and open to the public. However, because capacity is limited, advance enrollment is necessary. Enrollment will be primarily on a first come, first served basis, though preference is given to UCLA students and faculty members. Participants will be expected to read materials that will be distributed and to participate actively in the discussion. A pizza lunch will be delivered at the end of the seminar. To enroll, please e-mail Professor Daniel Lowenstein at lowenstein@law.ucla.edu.