The English Department, U.S. Naval Academy, has been my academic home since 1976.
Typically I teach courses ranging from freshman English and introduction to literature to seminars on medieval topics and periods.

My special areas of interest combine psychoanalytical and anthropological approaches with the study of Anglo-Saxon heroic poems and stories, as well as with fourteenth-century English poetry, mainly Chaucer's and especially his TROILUS & CRISEYDE. I also on occasion teach our British literature survey, our Renaissance survey, our introduction to Shakespeare's poetry and plays, our literary theory and aesthetics course. In the past I have studied historical and philosophical relationships between literature and science, focusing mainly on the English Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Swift, Shelley, Arnold).
 
 

Curriculum Vitae

John M. Hill
e-mail: jhill@usna.edu

Education:

 Ph.D., English, University of Washington, 1971
 Diss.: "Beowulf: Factors Shaping its World View,"
            Robert D. Stevick, advisor.
            B.A., English, University of Washington, 1966.
 
 

Publications:    Books

 The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures. Toronto: University of 
     Toronto Press, 2008.

 The Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic: Reconstructing Lordship in Early English
     Literature. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000.

 Reconstructive Polyphony: Studies in the Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages,
      For Robert O. Payne, in memoriam. Edited with Deborah Sinnreich-Levi,
      Cranbury: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000.

 The Cultural World in Beowulf. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
      Published in the Anthropological Horizons series.

Chaucerian Belief: The Poetics of Reverence and Delight. New Haven: Yale
     University Press, 1991.

                         Chapters in Books or Special Issues

"Beowulf Editions for the Ancestors: Cultural Genealogy and Power in the Claims
of Nineteenth-Century English and American Editors and Translators." In Constructing
Nations, Reconstructing Myths. Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey. Eds. Wawn, Johnson,
Walter, 53-70. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007.

"Gods at the Borders: Northern Myth and Anglo-Saxon Heroic Story." In Myth in Early
Northwest Europe. Ed. Stephen O. Glosecki, 241-56. Tempe: ACMRS, 2007.

"The Ethno-psychology of In-law Feud in Beowulf." Reprinted in The Postmodern
Beowulf. Eds. Joy and Ramsey, 319-43. Morgantown: West Virginia U. P. 2006.

"Violence and the Making of Wiglaf," in A Great Effusion of Blood, ed.
Dan Thiery, et.al., pp. 19-33. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2004.

"Aristocratic Friendship in Troilus and Criseyde: Pandarus, Courtly Love and Ciceronian
Brotherhood in Troy." In New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry. Ed. Robert G. Benson
and Susan J. Ridyard, 165-82. D.S. Brewer: Cambridge, England, 2003.

"The Sacrificial Synecdoche of Hands, Heads and Arms in Anglo-Saxon
Heroic Story." In Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England.
Ed. Benjamin C. Withers, Jonathan Wilcox, 116-137. Morgantown: West Virginia U.P.
2003.

"Translating Social Speech and Gesture in Beowulf." In Beowulf in Our Time: Teaching
Beowulf in Translation. Ed. Mary K. Ramsey, 67-79. Old English Newsletter, Subsidia vol. 31.
The Medieval Institute: Western Michigan University, 2002.

Editor's Introduction," Anthropological and Cultural Studies Approaches to Beowulf: A special issue
of Heroic Age 5, online January 2002. http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/toc.html

 "The Ethnopsychology of In-law Feud and the Remaking of Group Identity in Beowulf," in Anthropological
  Approaches to Old English Literature, a special issue of Philological
  Quarterly, 78 (Winter 1999), John M. Hill, guest editor.

 "The Social Milieu in Beowulf," in A Beowulf Handbook, eds. Robert E. Bjork,
  John D. Niles, 254-69. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

 "Transcendental Loyalty in "The Battle of Maldon." Mediaevalia, 17 (1994),
  67-88. A special issue: History into Literature: War, Narrative, and
  Ideology in England 900-1300, John D. Niles, guest editor.

 "The Noble Hrothgar: Love and the Great Legislator," in New Perspectives in
  Viking Studies, ed. Ross Samson, 169-78. Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1991.

Publications: Periodical Essay

"Recent BEOWULF Criticism." Literature Compass 6 (2006). Blackwells, on-line.

"The Countervailing Aesthetic of Joy in Troilus," Chaucer Review 39 (2005): 280-97.

"The Social Context of Oral Recitation in Beowulf," Oral Tradition, 17 (2002) in a
     thematic cluster, ed. Mark Amodio: 310-24.

"Warriors and Lords: Expanded Dominion and the Reshaping of Lordship in Anglo-Saxon
     Heroic Story," Heroic Age, 1.3, online Winter, 2000. http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/3/hill.html

 "Formalism in the Drama and Pepper’s Contextualism."RecLit, 18 (1992): 25-37.

 "Revenge and Super-ego Mastery in Beowulf." Assays, 5 (1989): 3-38.

 "Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: The Idea!" in Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval
      Association, 2 (1985): 40-50.

 "Beowulf and the Danish Succession: Gift-Giving as an Occasion for Complex
     Gesture." Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 11 (1982): 177-97.

"Beowulf, Value, and the Frame of Time." MLQ, 40 (1979): 3-16.

 "The Good Fields of Grief: Remnants of Conversion in Three Anglo-Saxon
      Poems." Psychocultural Review, 2 (1978): 5-26.

 "Corpuscular Fundament: Swift and the Mechanical Philosophy." Enlightenment
      Essays, 6 (1975): 37-49.

"Frankenstein and the Physiognomy of Desire." American Imago, 32 (1975): 335-
      58.

"The Book of the Duchess, Melancholy, and that Eight-Year Sickness." Chaucer
      Review, 9 (1974): 35-50.

"Middle English Poets and the Word: Notes Toward an Appraisal of Linguistic
      Consciousness." Criticism, 16 (1974): 153-69.

 "Braggadocchio and Spenser’s Golden World Concept: The Function of
      Unregenerative Comedy." ELH, 37 (1970): 315-24.

Publications: Recent Reviews:

Of Liska, ed. The North Sea World in the Middle Ages, MMLA Journal,
     36(2003): 40-42.
John H. Pratt, Chaucer and War, MLR, 98.1(2003): 171-72.
Edward Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and his
        Followers, Envoi, 9(2000): 88-90.
 J. Stephen Russell, Chaucer & the Trivium: The Mindsong of the
       Canterbury Tales, South Atlantic Review , 1999.
Peter Clemoes, Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry,
              and Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the
              Beowulf Manuscript, MP, 96 (1998): 58-65.
James W. Earl, Thinking About ‘Beowulf,’ MLR, 92 (1997): 160-2.
Christopher Fox, Locke and the Scriblerians: Identity and Consciousness,
          The Scriblerian, 23 (1990): 104-5.
 Ruth P. M. Lehmann, trns. Beowulf, Poet Lore, 84 (1989): 50-52.
 J. A. W. Bennett, Middle English Literature, Studies in the Age of Chaucer,
          11 (1989): 180-82.
 John W. Yolton, Thinking Matter;  John G. Burke, ed. The Uses of Science
          In the Age of Newton and Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland,
          The Scriblerian, 19 (1986): 72-5; 81.
 James Paradis and Thomas Postlewaid, eds. Victorian Science and Victorian
          Values; Diana Postlethwaite, Making it Whole; Peter Morton, The
          Vital Science: Biology and the Literary Imagination, The Arnoldian,
              13 (1985/86): 42-6.

Recent Presentations:

"How Chaucer Thinks: the Forms of His Great Subjects." Chaucer session, PAMLA
Bellingham, Washington, November 4, 2007.

"The Offa of Angeln Digression and the Aesthetics of Beowulf," Old English Session,
 MLA, Washington, D.C., December 28, 2005.

"Masculinity and Hrothgar's Tears of Gravitas." Old English Section, MLA,
San Diego. December 28, 2003.

                         
"Hamlet: Horatio, His Story." RMMLA, Missoula, October 9, 2003.
"Translating Social Gesture: Beowulf's Return to Hygelac." PAMLA, Bellingham,
November 10, 2002.

"Gods at the Borders: Northern Myth and Anglo-Saxon Heroic Story." International
Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2003.

"The Aesthetics of Joy in Troilus and Criseyde," New Chaucer Society Conference,
Boulder, July 17, 2002.

"Love, Politics and Feud in Romeo & Juliet," RMMLA, Vancouver, October 11, 2001.
"Germanic Legend and Anglo-Saxon Heroic Story," Manchester Conference on Myth
and Literature, The John Ryland Library, September 3, 2001.

 "The Social Milieu of Troilus & Criseyde," a panel at the New Chaucer
  Society Conference, late July 2000, London.

"The Dynamics of Courtly Conversation in Troilus and Criseyde," Courtly
  Literature Society, The International Congress on Medieval Studies,
  Kalamazoo, May 2000.

 "Noble Friendship and Aristocratic Values in Troilus and Criseyde,"
  Sewanee Medieval Conference, University of the South, March 31, 2000.

 "The Emptiness of Fear: King Beowulf’s Retainers and the Dragon," Medieval
  and Renaissance Studies Interdisciplinary Conference, Arizona State
  University, February 18, 2000.

"Anthropological Approaches to Medieval Literature: Wedding Alliances
  and Rituals of Submission," a session at SAMLA, November, 1999.

 "Lordship and the Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic: Enlarged Dominion,
  Diminished Freedom," Delaware Valley Medieval Association,
  University of Delaware, Newark, October 16, 1999.

. "Violence, Right and Kingship in the 755 Chronicle Entry on West Saxon Feud,"
  International Society of Anglo-Saxon Studies, University of Notre Dame,
  August, 1999

 "Anthropological Approaches to Medieval Literature." Two Sessions,
  International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 7, 1999

 "Reintegrating Hildeburh." PAMLA, Scripps College, November 7, 1998.

 "Violence and the Making of Wiglaf." Toronto, Centre for Medieval Studies
  Conference on Violence, October 24, 1998.

 "Masculinities in The Monk’s Tale." New Chaucer Society Conference, Paris,
  The Sorbonne, July 17, 1998.

 "Cultural Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: The Case of Troilus." International
  Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 12, 1998.

Work in Progress:

"How Chaucer Thinks," a study of his major subjects across the Works.

Aesthetics and Old English Poetry, a gathering of essays by various scholars on aesthetic
issues in the form, prosody and production of poems.