Dr. Katherine E. Conley is a native of Pennsylvania who, after 12 years of living in the South and practicing very hard, can finally say “y’all” naturally. (At least, she thinks so.)

In the classroom, Dr. Conley loves getting students excited about reading and exploring new things. For example, did you know that “they” has been used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun since at least the 1300s? Or that the study of medieval literature is isn’t limited to Europe and includes dynamic texts from diverse cultures in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere? Or that sci-fi isn’t just about aliens and robots but can explore complex issues about identity, the environment, medicine, economics, and the very nature of what it means to be human? These are the kinds of things Dr. Conley covers in her classes on medieval literature and language, manuscript and print culture, gender and language, English language studies, and science fiction and fantasy.

Dr. Conley has published her research in several articles in prominent academic journals and is currently finishing her book, titled The Naked Text of the Medieval Sublime. It focuses on how medieval readers and writers used structures of literary interpretation to capture and define what they considered most beautiful and moving. Although it is commonly thought that medieval literature had no formal concept of the sublime, Dr. Conley’s book establishes just how vibrantly it was applied and understood in the middle ages.