Santa Clara University

Phyllis R. Brown, Associate Professor in the Department of English, received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1979 and has been teaching at Santa Clara University since 1982.

Phyllis Brown teaches survey courses in medieval and early modern literature, introductions to literature and poetry, and upper-division courses such as Comparative Humanism, Medieval Literature, and Myth in Women's Writing. Publications include essays on Beowulf, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim's play "Sapientia,", Heloise's letters to Abelard, Guillaume de Machaut lyric poetry, and Louise Labe's poetry. She is affiliated with Women's and Gender Studies program (see http://www.scu.edu/pswg and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program http://www.scu.edu/mrs. She is also President of the Medieval Association of the pacific http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/map

• Rhetoric and Composition
• Introduction to Literary Study
• Introduction to Poetry
• Surveys of British and Western Literature
• Medieval Literature
• Comparative Humanism
• Medieval European Women

• Anglo-Saxon poetry
• Guillaume de Machaut’s lyric poetry
• Louise Labé’s lyric poetry

• "Louise Labé and Semiramis: A Feminist Reading," Women in French Studies 5 (1997): 107-22.  This essay is being reprinted by The Gale Group fall 2005.

• "Hrotsvit's Sapientia as a Foreign Woman."  Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Contexts, Identities, Affinities, and Performances.  Ed. Phyllis R. Brown, Linda A. McMillin, and Katharina M. Wilson.  University of Toronto Press, 2004.   160-76.

• With Laurie J. Churchill and Jane E. Jeffrey.  "Women Writing Latin: An Introduction."  Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe.  3 vols.  Ed. Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey.  New York: Routledge, 2002.

• "Cycles and Change in Beowulf," Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission In Honor of Whitney F. Bolton.  Ed. Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis.  Bucknell UP, 2000. 171-92.

• With John C. Peiffer, II. "Heloise, Dialectic, and the Heroides." Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman. The New Middle Ages. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler.  New York: St. Martin's, 2000.143-60.  John Peiffer graduated from SCU in  1998 and is currently a law student at Notre Dame University.