Dr. Alan Ambrisco

Dr. Alan Ambrisco

Title: Professor
Dept/Program: English
Office: Olin 347
Phone: 330-972-5645
Email: ambrisc@uakron.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format

Biography

Alan S. Ambrisco teaches English Literature 1, World Literatures, Shakespeare and His World, The Development of Arthurian Legend, and other courses in British and medieval literature.  He specializes in the medieval period, and his research interests include Chaucer, medieval romance, modern adaptations of medieval literature, popular studies, and poetry.  He has published in a variety of academic journals, including The Chaucer Review, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, The Journal of Dracula Studies, and Horror Studies. His poems have appeared in Stonecoast Review, Sheepshead Review, The Great Lakes Review, Whiskey Island Magazine, Cactus Heart, and other magazines and journals.  He is currently working on his first book of poems, tentatively entitled Dreams of a Rust-Belt Beaver.

Research

  • Honorable Mention, New Words 2008 Poetry Contest (entry entitled “Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout Uniform”)
  • 2nd Place Winner, New Words 2005 Poetry Contest (entry entitled “Nebraska Sky”)
  • 2nd Place Winner, University of Akron Women’s History Month Poetry Contest (2005)
  • Recipient, 2003 Chairs’ Award for Outstanding Achievement, Professional and Community Service.  The Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Akron.
  • Nominee, 2003 Outstanding Teacher Award, University of Akron Alumni Association.
  • Recipient, Summer 2004 Faculty Summer Research Fellowship, The University ofAkron.  Project entitled “The Limits of Crusade Rhetoric in the Siege of Melayne.”
  • Recipient, Summer 2002 Faculty Summer Research Fellowship, The University ofAkron.  Project entitled “Poetry, Politics, and the English Language in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale.”
  • Recipient, Summer 2000 Faculty Summer Research Fellowship, The University ofAkron.  Project entitled “Pagan Cannibalism, the Eucharist, and the Question of Religious Tolerance in Mandeville’s Travels.” 

Publications

Publications in Refereed Journals 

  • “Battling Monstrosity in Beowulf and Grendel (2005): Using a Film Adaptation to Teach Beowulf.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 23.1 (2016): 29-40.
  • “Teaching The Turke and Sir Gawain in the Undergraduate British Literature Survey Course” (This Rough Magic, December 2015) http://www.thisroughmagic.org
  • “ ‘Now y lowve God’: The Process of Conversion in Sir Gowther.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 195-225.
  • “Suicide, Spectral Politics, and the Ghosts of History in Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian.” Horror Studies 6.1 (2015): 19-37.
  • “Trolling for Outcasts in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel.” Journal of Popular Culture 46.2 (2013): 243-56.
  • “Grappling with Sir Gowther in the Middle English Survey.” This Rough Magic (June 2012). http://www.thisroughmagic.org
  • “ ‘The Coin of Our Realm’: Blood and Images in Dracula 2000” (with Lance Svehla).  Journal of Dracula Studies 8 (2006): 20-29.
  • “’It lyth nat in my tongue’”: Occupatio and Otherness in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review 38.3 (2004): 205-228. 
  • “Teaching the Squire’s Tale as an Exercise in Literary History.”  Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 10.1 (2003): 5-18. 
  • “Cannibalism and Cultural Encounters in Richard Coeur De Lion.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29.3 (1999): 499-528. 
  • “Succession and Sovereignty in Lydgate’s Prologue to The Troy Book,” with Paul Strohm.  The Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 40-57. 

Creative Writing

    • “Crooked Cuyahoga.” Savor (Summer/Fall 2016): 47.
    • “Advice for Composters” and “A Mother’s Lament.” Stonecoast Review 5 (Sum 2016): 2, 89. 
    • “Weeds.”  Sheepshead Review 38.3 (2016): 73. 
    • “Hitchhiking in the Nineteenth Century.” Great Lakes Review 3 (Fall 2013): 9-10.
    • “Through the Woods.” Kindred 4 (Fall 2013): no page. 
    • “Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout Uniform.” Cactus Heart 5 (September 2013): 123
    • “Floodgates I,” “Floodgates II,” and “Greyhound Terminal, Indianapolis.”  The Red Rock Review  21 (2007): 37-39. 
    • “First House.” Whiskey Island Magazine 52 (2007): 61.
    • “Signs” and “Snapshot.” Heartlands 4 (2006): 23.
    • “The Beaten Road.” Plainsongs 27.1 (2006): 29. 
    • “The Elusive Ball.”  Elysian Fields Quarterly 21 (2004): 96. 
    • “Teaching Beowulf: A Poem of Lament.”  Ohio Teachers Write 8 (2003): 58-59
    •  ---.  Reprinted in Ohio Journal of English Language Arts 44.1 (2004): 41.

    Education

    Ph.D., Indiana University

    Courses

    Graduate Courses

    Anglo Saxon, Chaucer, Chaucer’s Courtly Poems, Medieval Romance, Middle English Literature, Women in the Middle Ages, Modern Irish Drama

    Undergraduate Courses

    Anglo Saxon, Chaucer, Classic and Contemporary Literature, English Composition I, English Composition II, English Literature I, Fiction Appreciation, Re-writing the Middle Ages, Middle English Literature, Critical Reading and Writing, Modern Irish Drama, World Literatures, Senior Seminar