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Jennifer Summit

Co-Director

Chair, Department of English

Office: 460-201

Office phone: (650) 723-1560

email: summit AT stanford.edu

Degrees:

Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
B.A., Vassar College

A native to the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Summit returned to California to join Stanford's faculty after receiving her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1995. Her scholarly interests bridge the medieval and early modern periods, focusing on changing notions of books, authors, literature, and knowledge across this time span. In both her teaching and her research she brings to the study of early English literature an interest in both traditional texts and methodologies and theoretical issues relating to the history of literature and the disciplines more broadly. Her published work includes Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008) and Lost Property: the Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380-1589 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000). With David Wallace (U. Penn) she edited a special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2008) on "Rethinking Periodization." Her current book project traces the debate over the "active life" versus the "contemplative life" from the medieval and early modern periods to the contemporary academy. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the NEH, the ACLS, and the Stanford Humanities Center. At Stanford she has been awarded the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching and currently is Eleanor Loring Ritch University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. She currently serves as Chair of the English Department.