College of Arts and Humanities
Melissa Elmes
Melissa Ridley Elmes
Professor, English
McCluer Hall 118
(636) 627-2506
[email protected]
Biographical Information
Dr. Melissa Ridley Elmes (B.A., French, The College of William and Mary; ; M.A., English, Longwood University; MFA, Creative Writing, 佪圖APP University; Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina Greensboro) is an interdisciplinary literary historian of the medieval period, with particular emphasis on the 10-15th-century Northern European and British Isles literatures and cultures, including Old/Middle English, Welsh, Irish, Anglo-Norman, and Old Norse/Icelandic. She is an award-winning instructor as well as a high-profile scholar, with recent articles in涉rthuriana, Years Work in Medievalism, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium,烘odern Philology and Medieval Feminist Forum, an edited collection of essays on the fairy Melusine (Brill, 2017) a volume of essays on涌ood and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales(Routledge, 2021) and an edited collection on Ethics in the Arthurian Legend (D.S. Brewer, 2023). Dr. Elmes is also a writer of poetry and fiction, and the author of眩wo books of poetry: Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems(Dark Myth Publications, 2020) and Dreamscapes and Dark Corners (Alien Buddha Press 2023); her creative work has garnered nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Science Fiction Poetry Associations Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star awards for speculative poetry. She serves on the advisory boards of several scholarly presses and organizations including Medieval Institute Publications Monsters, Prodigies, and Demons series, the International Arthurian Society North American Branch, and the Southeastern Medieval Association.
Academic & Research Interests
- Literatures and cultures of the Medieval British Isles and Scandinavia
- Medievalism in popular culture
- Womens and gender studies
- The Arthurian legend
- Robin Hood/ outlawry
- Intersections of gender, violence, and the law
- Monsters and monstrosity
- Alchemy, magic, and esoterica
- Mythology and folklore
- Poetry and poetics
- Fantasy and science fiction
- Critical/creative hybrid writing
- Pedagogy
Courses Taught
Dr. Elmes has taught the following courses:
- Senior Capstone in English Studies
- English Studies Internship
- History of the English Language
- Medieval Afterlives: Modern Receptions of the Medieval
- Medieval AfterlivesMedieval Women
- Early Modern Literature
- Medieval Literature: Violence and Trauma, Beowulf to Malory
- Medieval Literature: poetry and poetics
- Chaucer
- Mythology and Folklore
- The Arthurian Legend
- Viking Literature
- Celtic Literature (taught face-to-face and online)
- British Literature: Fact, Fiction and Everything In-Between
- The Medieval World
- World Literature to 1500: Faith, War, Traveling, Memory and Commemoration
- Writing for Game Design
- Research and Argumentation/ Composition II
- Global Introduction to Gender Studies
- Applied Interdisciplinary Studies Tutorial/ Internship
- Freshman Seminar: The Global Arthurian Legend
Publications
Publications
Select Publications
- Edited Collections
- 2023 Ethics in the Arthurian Legend. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer.
- 2021 Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Kristin Bovaird – Abbo. New York: Routledge Press. Reviewed in: Robin Hood Scholars: IARHS on the Web
- 2017 Melusines Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. Eds. Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes. Leiden: Brill. Reviewed in: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Preternature, Mediaevistik, Medieval Feminist Forum.
- Poetry collections
- 2023 Dreamscapes and Dark Corners. Alien Buddha Press.
- 2020 Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems. Apple Valley: Dark Myth Publications.
- Peer-reviewed journal articles
- 2025 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and Medieval Studies: Our Institutions, Our Selves; Our Past, and Our Future. With Nicole Lopez Jantzen. Speculum 100/1 (January 2025): 79-118.
- 2023 Women Reading and Women Writing and Men Writing Women Who Read and Write: (Re-) Considering Women’s Literate Practices and the Ethics of Women’s Literacy in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Arthuriana 33.2: 84103.
- 2023 When the Digital Generation Isnt: Pivoting Online with Traditional Campus Students. Years Work in Medievalism 35.36 (2020/21): 1126.
- Refereed book chapters
- 2024 Teaching Beowulf as a Cultural Reliquary, in Practical Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, eds. Larry Swain and Ophelia Erynn Hostetter. De Gruyter, 207-219.
- 2023 Arthurian Ethics Before the Pentecostal Oath: In Search of Ethical Origins in the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen. Ethics in the Arthurian Legend. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 834.
- 2022 Female Friendship in Late-Medieval English Literature: Cultural Translation in Chaucer, Gower, and Malory. Womens Friendship in Medieval Literature. Eds. Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala. Ohio State University Press, 13554.
- Introductions
- 2020 Introduction to Special Issue: MEARCSTAPA: Ten Years of Teratology. With Asa Simon Mittman and Thea Tomaini. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 9.1: 110.
- 2019 Editors Note: New Feminist Voices in the Heroic Age. With Carla Mar穩a Thomas. The Heroic Age 19.
- Anthologized Poems
- 2024 Dream Visions. 2024 Rhysling Anthology, 6870.
- 2024 Adventures in the Dark of the Mind. Best of Penumbric, vol. vii.
- 2023 Never Was a Princess Girl. Dwarf Stars 2023 Anthology, 18.
- Poetry Editing
- 2024 Outlaws issue of Eye to the Telescope. October.
- Poetry
- 2024 Intergalactic Renthead. Star*Line 47.1: 15.
- 2023 Musings from the Wet Season. Belmont Story Review 8: 87.
- 2022 Dragons and Drams. Liquid Imagination, June. Reprinted in Dreamscapes and Dark Corners
- Anthologized Stories
- 2024 A Mnemosurgeons Tale. Hexagon Year Four Anthology, 167-176.
- 2022 The Haunted and The Possessed. Unwelcomed: Stories of Hauntings and Possessions, ed. Stephanie J. Bardy (Zombie Works Publications), 45-54.
- 2020 Dr. Watson and the Werewolf. Full Moon and Howlin: A Werewolf Anthology, ed. Stephanie J. Bardy (Zombieworks Press), 101142.
- Fiction
- 2024 Thread of Indignity. DarkWinter Literary Magazine. June 15.
- 2024 Come Hell or Highwater. Oxford Magazine 52.
- 2024 A Mnemosurgeons Tale. Hexagon 16 (March), 514.
- 2023 A Sunbathing Frog My Hearts Gravestone. Black Fork Review 9.
- Creative Nonfiction and Craft Essays
- 2023 Dark and Twisty with a Side of Optimism. Miracle Monocle 20.
- 2022 Yard Sale. Sheepshead Review 45.1: 113114.
- 2022 May 22, 2012. Past Ten.
- 2021 The Art (and Heart) of Arthurian Things: A Craft Essay. The Years Work in Medievalism 34 (2019; published 2021): 7789.