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Brenda Schildgen
Director, Professor of Comparative Literature
2008 recipient of the UCD Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement
Winner of the 2001 UC Davis Outstanding Teacher Award
Ph.D., University of Indiana
Email: bdschildgen@ucdavis.edu
Phone: 530.752.9558
Office: 811 Sproul Hall
Office Hours
Introduction
Brenda Deen Schildgen, 2008 recipient of the UC Davis Prize for
Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, specializes in the
European Middle Ages, Bible as Literature, Dante, and Jewish, Christian,
and Moslem relations in the European Middle Ages. She has a strong
secondary interest in colonial and postcolonial literature, especially of
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Recipient of numerous fellowships
including National Endowment for the Humanities, PEW, and Bogliasco
Foundation, she was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2005-06,
where she wrote Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Art and
Architecture in Europe (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008). Her books include, most
recently the co-edited volume (with Gang Zhou and Sander Gilman) Other
Renaissances; Dante and the Orient; Pagans, Tartars, Moslems and Jews in
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Power and Prejudice: The Reception of the
Gospel of Mark, which won a Choice Best Book award in 1999, and Crisis and
Continuity: Time in the Gospel of Mark.
Research and Teaching Interests
- European Middle Ages, particularly Southern Europe
- Reception theory
- The relationship between history and fiction
- Biblical hermeneutics
- Interpretive theory
Education:
- Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Indiana University
- M.A., Comparative Literature, Indiana University
- M.A., Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
- B.A., English and French, University of Wisconsin
Selected Publications
- Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Wayne State, 1999), Choice best book award in 1999
- Dante and the Orient (Illinois, 2002)
- Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Florida, 2001)
- Co-editor, The Rhetoric Canon (1997), Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (2000), Other Renaissances (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006), and Medieval Readings of Romans (Edinburgh, 2006).
- Co-editor, The World of Fables

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Brenda SchildgenDirector, Professor of Comparative Literature Email: bdschildgen@ucdavis.edu |
Introduction
Brenda Deen Schildgen, 2008 recipient of the UC Davis Prize for
Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, specializes in the
European Middle Ages, Bible as Literature, Dante, and Jewish, Christian,
and Moslem relations in the European Middle Ages. She has a strong
secondary interest in colonial and postcolonial literature, especially of
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Recipient of numerous fellowships
including National Endowment for the Humanities, PEW, and Bogliasco
Foundation, she was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2005-06,
where she wrote Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Art and
Architecture in Europe (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008). Her books include, most
recently the co-edited volume (with Gang Zhou and Sander Gilman) Other
Renaissances; Dante and the Orient; Pagans, Tartars, Moslems and Jews in
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Power and Prejudice: The Reception of the
Gospel of Mark, which won a Choice Best Book award in 1999, and Crisis and
Continuity: Time in the Gospel of Mark.
Research and Teaching Interests
- European Middle Ages, particularly Southern Europe
- Reception theory
- The relationship between history and fiction
- Biblical hermeneutics
- Interpretive theory
Education:
- Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Indiana University
- M.A., Comparative Literature, Indiana University
- M.A., Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
- B.A., English and French, University of Wisconsin
Selected Publications
- Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Wayne State, 1999), Choice best book award in 1999
- Dante and the Orient (Illinois, 2002)
- Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Florida, 2001)
- Co-editor, The Rhetoric Canon (1997), Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (2000), Other Renaissances (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006), and Medieval Readings of Romans (Edinburgh, 2006).
- Co-editor, The World of Fables