Education:
Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1970 (“The ‘In Eched’ Method of Narration in Chaucer’s Troilus”); M.A., CWRU, 1968; NDEA Fellow 1967-1970; A.B., Fairfield University, 1967
Teaching:
Professor, University of Kentucky, 1981-2005; Associate Professor, UK, 1975-81; Assistant Professor, UK, 1970-75; University Fellow, Case Western Reserve, 1969-70. Syllabuses for recent courses are still available at the Course Web Pages of the English Department website.
Administration:
Chair, Department of English, University of Kentucky, 1986-90
Publications:
Books
Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, revised paperback edition, with Foreword by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (British Library Publications and University of Michigan Press, 1997)
Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981); Reprint (1984)
The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1986)
Electronic Edition
Editor, The Electronic Beowulf, with Ionut Emil Iacob, 2-CD set Version 2.0, British Library Publications, November 2003.
Editor, The Electronic Beowulf, with Andrew Prescott, Elizabeth Solopova, C.J. Yuan, David French, Michael Ellis, and Linda Cantara. 2-CD set published by British Library Publications and The University of Michigan Press (1999).
In addition to a new electronic edition and transcript with expansive search facilities and comprehensive glossaries, the Electronic Beowulf includes complete color facsimiles of Beowulf and its entire composite codex, British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv; the eighteenth-century Thorkelin transcripts; the 1815 first edition by Thorkelin; and the earliest nineteenth-century collations by Conybeare and Madden. An online “Help” facility is available at www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/guide.htm, where a free upgrade for owners of the CD-set will soon be available.
The Electronic Beowulf won the 2001 Beatrice White Prize awarded by the English Association (United Kingdom) “for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English Literature before 1590.” It also won the first British Library Association / Mecklermedia Award in 1994 for “innovation through information technology.”
Features on the project have appeared, among other places, in the London Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Sunday Independent, the BBC World Service (twice), “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio, the Washington Post, Computerworld, Computers in Libraries (cover story), National Geographic, Scientific American, the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and a special issue on Digital Libraries in Communications of the ACM.
Electronic editions-in-progress
Recent Funded Research
The ARCHway Project, 2003-2005: “The ARCHway Project: Architecture for Research in Computing for Humanities through Research, Teaching, and Learning,” is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Information Technology Research (ITR) program. ARCHway received an additional grant for Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for 2003-2004.
The Electronic Boethius Project, 2002-2006: “Alfred the Great’s Old English version of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy: An Electronic Edition,” is funded for three years by a Collaborative Research award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, with a supplemental matching grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Digital Atheneum Project, 1999-2004: “The Digital Atheneum: new techniques for restoring, searching, and editing humanities collections” is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Digital Libraries Program.
Articles
“Remodeling Alfred’s Boethius with the tol ond andweorc of Edition Production Technology (EPT),” Forthcoming in Making Sense: Constructing Meaning in Early English, eds. Antonette diPaolo Healey and Kevin Kiernan. Toronto Old English Series, University of Toronto Press, 2006. A lengthy excerpt describing the EPT tools is available online at the Electronic Boethius website.
“Digital Facsimiles in Editing: Some Guidelines for Editors of Image-based Electronic Editions.” Forthcoming in Electronic Textual Editing, ed. John Unsworth, Lou Burnard, and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (New York: Modern Language Association, 2005), pp. 256-262.
“The Source of the Napier Fragment of Alfred’s Boethius,” Inaugural issue of the Digital Medievalist 1.1. Spring 2005.
“The nathwylc Scribe and the Beowulf Palimpsest.” Forthcoming in Poetry, Place and Gender: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Helen Damico, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, forthcoming 2006.
“The ARCHway Project: Architecture for Research in Computing for Humanities through Research, Teaching, and Learning,” with Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, Alex Dekhtyar, and Dorothy Carr Porter, with assistance of Kenneth Hawley, Sandeep Bodapati, and Ionut Emil Iacob. Literary and Linguistic Computing, (2005), pp. 1-20.
“Odd Couples in Ælfric’s Julian and Basilissa in British Library Cotton MS Otho B. x.” Forthcoming in Beatus vir: Studies in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Manuscripts in Memory of Phillip Pulsiano. eds. Kirsten Wolf and A.N. Doane. Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS), 2005.
“Report of the DELOS-NSF Working Group on Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials,” National Science Foundation, Digital Libraries Initiative Phase Two, International Projects, 10 December 2002. Co-edited with Ching-chih Chen.
“The Reappearances of St. Basil the Great in British Library MS Cotton Otho B. x.” With Brent Seales and James Griffioen. Computers and the Humanities 36:1 (February 2002), 7-26.
“Reading Cædmon’s Hymn with Someone Else’s Glosses,” Old English Literature: Critical Essays (Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 103-124. Edited by Roy Liuzza. Reprinted from Representations 32 (Fall 1990), 157-174.
“Digital Imagery for Works of Art: Report of the Co-Chairs.” With Charles Rhyne and Ron Spronk. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts. November 19-20, 2001. Available online at <http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/mellon/report.html>
“3D Acquisition and Restoration of Medieval Manuscripts.” With Michael S. Brown, Brent Seales, and James Griffioen. Communications of the ACM. Special Issue on Digital Libraries. May 2001.
“Creating Electronic Editions from Medieval Manuscripts,” forthcoming in Digital Preservation of Medieval Manuscripts and Early Printed Books (The Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), eds. Milena Dobreva, Serguey Ivanov, Seamus Ross, and Kevin Kiernan.
“The Conybeare-Madden Collation of Thorkelin’s Beowulf,” Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage, eds. Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine M. Treharne (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1998), 117-136.
“King Alfred’s Burnt Boethius,” The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture, eds. George Bornstein and Theresa Lynn Tinkle (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 7-32.
“Neil Ripley Ker,” Dictionary of Medieval Scholarship, Volume 2, ed. Helen Damico (New York: Garland, 1998), 425-437.
“The Eleventh-Century Origin of Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript,” The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1981), pp. 9-22. Published in association with the Centre for Medieval Studies as the 7th volume of the Toronto Old English Series. Second edition, 1997.
“The Legacy of Wiglaf: Saving a Wounded Beowulf” (Revised and reprinted from The Kentucky Review 6 [1986], 27-44), Beowulf: Basic Readings, ed. Peter Baker (New York: Garland, 1994), 195-218. Reprint 2001.
“Digital Preservation, Restoration, and Dissemination of Medieval Manuscripts,” Scholarly Publishing on the Electronic Networks: Gateways, Gatekeepers, and Roles in the Information Omniverse, eds. Ann Okerson and Dru Mogge (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing, 1994), 37-43.
“The Electronic Beowulf: 1994 Progress Report,” Medieval English Studies Newsletter 31 (Tokyo 1994), 7-9.
“Old Manuscripts / New Technologies,” Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. Mary Richards (New York: Garland, 1994), 37-54.
“The Eleventh-Century Origin of Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript” (Reprinted from The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. Mary Richards (New York: Garland, 1994), 277-299.
“Opening the ‘Electronic Beowulf’,” Old English Newsletter, 27.1 (1993), 35-40.
“Re-editing Old English Poems from Print to Script,” review article of Fred C. Robinson and E.G. Stanley, eds., Old English Verse Texts from Many Sources: A Comprehensive Collection, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 23 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1990), ANQ 4 (July 1991), 139-143.
“Digital Image-Processing and the Beowulf Manuscript,” Computers and Medieval Studies, eds. Andrew Armour and Marilyn Deegan, Literary and Linguistic Computing 6.1 (1991), 20-27 (6 illustrations).
“A Long Footnote for J. Gerritsen’s ‘Supplementary’ Description of BL Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv,” English Studies (1991), 489-496.
“Reading Caedmon’s Hymn With Someone Else’s Glosses,” Representations 32 (Fall 1990), 157-174 (5 illustrations).
“Old English Manuscripts: The Scribal Deconstruction of ‘Early’ Northumbrian,” in Old English Studies: Current State and Future Prospects, ed. Nicholas Howe, ANQ 3 (1990), 48-55.
“Madden, Thorkelin, and MS Vitellius/Vespasian A. xv,” The Library, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 8 (1986), 127-132.
“The Legacy of Wiglaf: Saving a Wounded Beowulf,” The Kentucky Review 6 (1986), 27-44.
“The Lost Letters of Beowulf 2253a,” Neophilologus 70 (1986), 633-635.
“Grendel’s Heroic Mother,” In Geardagum VI (1984), 13-33.
“The State of the Beowulf Manuscript 1882-1983,” Anglo-Saxon England 13 (1984), 23-42.
“Thorkelin’s Trip to Great Britain and Ireland 1786-1791,” The Library, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 5 (1983), 1-21.
“The Eleventh-Century Origin of Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript,” The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1981), pp. 9-22. Published in association with the Centre for Medieval Studies as the 7th volume of the Toronto Old English Series.
“The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf,” American Philosophical Society, Grantees’ Reports 1981, 244-245.
“Deor: The Consolations of an Anglo-Saxon Boethius,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978), 333-340.
“The Mysteries of the Sea-Eagle in Exeter Riddle 74,” Philological Quarterly 54 (1975), 518-522.
“Hector the Second: The Lost Face of Troilustratus,” Annuale Medi3/4vale 16 (1975), 52-62.
“Athelston and the Rhyme of the English Romances,” Modern Language Quarterly 36 (1975), 339-353.
“The Art of the Descending Catalogue, and a Fresh Look at Alisoun,” Chaucer Review 10 (1975), 1-16.
“A Solution to the Mæðhild-Geat Crux in Deor,” English Studies 56 (1975), 97-99.
“Cwene: The Old Profession of Exeter Riddle 95,” Modern Philology 72 (1975), 384-389.
“Undo Your Door and the Order of Chivalry,” Studies in Philology 70 (1973), 345-366.
Electronic Articles
“Hand-written Materials and the Science of Information Management,” The Wave of the Future: National Science Foundation, Post Digital Library Futures Workshop, Wequassett Inn, Cape Cod, 15-17 June 2003.
“Report of the DELOS-NSF Working Group on Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials,” National Science Foundation, Digital Libraries Initiative Phase Two, International Projects, 10 December 2002. Co-edited with Ching-chih Chen.
“Significant Electronic Access to Damaged Manuscripts.” DELOS-NSF Working Group Meeting on Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials, Florence, Italy (January 2002).
“Digital Imagery for Works of Art: Report of the Co-Chairs.” With Charles Rhyne and Ron Spronk. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts. November 19-20, 2001. Available online at <http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/mellon/report.html>
“The Digital Atheneum - Restoring Damaged Manuscripts.” With Brent Seales and James Griffioen. RLG DigiNews 3:6 (15 December 1999).
“The Digital Atheneum: New Technologies for Restoring and Preserving Old Documents.” With Brent Seales, James Griffioen, C. J. Yuan, and Linda Cantara. Computers in Libraries 20:2 (February 2000), 26-30. Cover story.
“The Electronic Beowulf," Early online presentation from the British Library website, Portico. Powerpoint presentation of the same article, expanded by Andrew Prescott, Curator in the Department of Manuscripts, British Library, ran in the Students’ Room, 1994-95.
“The Electronic Beowulf,” cover story with color illustrations, Computers in Libraries 15 (February 1995), 14-15.
“Digital Preservation, Restoration, and Dissemination of Medieval Manuscripts,” 1993 Mosaic presentation announcing and outlining the Electronic Beowulf Project.
Review article, Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), PostModern Culture 3 (Fall 1992), 17 screens.
Reviews
Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript (Woodbridge, England: D.S. Brewer Press, 1995), Speculum (1998).
Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, Durham Medieval Texts 9 (Durham, England: 1994), ANQ (1995).
Martin O.H. Carver, ed., The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, England: The Boydell Press, 1992), Speculum (1995), 596-600.
Calvin B. Kendall, The Metrical Grammar of ‘Beowulf’, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 5, eds. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Speculum (1994), 512-514.
Christine Franzen, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1991), Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1992), 419-422.
Manfred Goerlach, Introduction to Early Modern English, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), ANQ (1992).
Randolph Swearer, Raymond Oliver, Marijane Osborn, ‘Beowulf’: A Likeness (Yale University Press, 1990), Envoi (1992), 263-266.
N. R. Ker (+), Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957: Oxford: The Clarendon Press, reissued 1990), ANQ (1991), 205-207.
Joanne A. Rice, Middle English Romance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1955-1985 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 4 (1991), 94-96.
Bruce Mitchell, On Old English (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), Envoi 2.1 (1989), 121-124.
G.V. Smithers, ed., Havelok (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1987), Envoi 1.2 (1988), 386-390.
Angus Cameron (+), Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette DiPaolo Healey, et al., eds., “The Dictionary of Old English: Facscicle D,” Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986. Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 1.1 (1988), 87-93.
Consulting and Advising
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Digital Library Tools Project, University of Illinois; Digital Image Archive for Medieval Music (DIAMM), Oxford; The Alfredian Boethius Project, Oxford; Australian Academy of the Humanities; The Arts & Humanities Research Board, United Kingdom; National Endowment for the Humanities; National Science Foundation DELOS (European) Network of Excellence for Digital Imagery and NSF Working Group on “Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials 2002;” Australian Academy of the Humanities 2002; co-chair of National Science Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation workshop on Digital Imagery of Works of Art, Harvard University, November 2001; International Advisory Board, Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research; Advisory Board, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (Chair, New Fellowships); Consultant, Bede’s World Museum, Jarrow, England; Grants Assessor, Australian Research Council; Grants Assessor, National Endowment for the Humanities; Academic Director, The Electronic Beowulf Project, The British Library and the Royal Library, Copenhagen; Editorial Board, “Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile,” Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, SUNY Binghamton; Consultant, “The Old English Corpus in Machine-Readable Form,” The Dictionary of Old English Project, University of Toronto; Consultant, The Research Group for Manuscript Studies, The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Technical consultant, Special Collections, Department of Manuscripts, and Conservation Laboratory, The British Library; Consultant, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, Urbana; Associate Editor, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews; Advisory Board, Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature; Co-founder, with Patrick Conner, of ANSAXNET, a computer forum for Anglo-Saxonists, currently with 2000 members from 20 countries; Advisory Board, ANSAXNET (ANSAX-L@wvnvm.wvnet.edu); member of founding Advisory Board, SEENET (Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts), published by University of Michigan Press; member of founding Editorial Board, Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, now The Medieval Review, the first refereed electronic journal in Medieval Studies.
Recent Awards and Honors
Elected Lifetime Honorary Member, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2005); Honorary Life Member, Medieval Academy of America; National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research three-year grant for “Alfred the Great’s Old English Version of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,” 2002-2005; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation match for NEH challenge grant, 2002-2003; National Science Foundation ITR grant for “The ARCHway Project: Research in Computing for Humanities through Research, Teaching, and Learning,” 2003-2005 (with Alexander Dekhtyar and Jerzy W.I. Jaromczyk); 2001 Beatrice White Prize from the English Association (United Kingdom) for Electronic Beowulf; appointed T. Marshall Hahn Sr. Professor of Arts and Sciences, 2002; National Science Foundation DLI2 grant for “The Digital Atheneum: new techniques for restoring, searching, and editing humanities collections,” 1999-2003 (with Brent Seales and James Griffioen); IBM Shared University Research (SUR) grant, equipment and collaboration for “The Digital Atheneum” December 1998 (with Brent Seales and James Griffioen); International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) grant for “Digital Preservation of Medieval Manuscripts and Early Printed Books” (Sofia, Bulgaria, 1999-2000); elected Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky (1998/99); elected to International Association of University Professors of English (1999); Featured Speaker for NEH Summer Seminar, The Medieval Institute, Kalamazoo, MI (1999); Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, University of Calabria, Italy (1999); William S. Ward Prize for Distinguished Service, UK (1996); International Fellow, Centre for Information Management and Advanced Technology for Scholarship (CIMATS), London Guildhall University; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for Electronic Beowulf, 1995-1996; National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for Research, 1995; The Library Association (United Kingdom) and Mecklermedia Award for Innovation in Information Technology, 1994-95.
Recent University Committees
President’s Task Force on Research Computational Resources (Fall 2003), English Department Executive Committee (2003-2004), Advisory Board, Center for Computational Sciences (1996-2005); Interdisciplinary Informatics Committee for Graduate Curriculum and Certificate (1997-2005); Vice President’s University Research Computing Subcommittee (1999-2005); Chancellor’s Humanities and Arts Area Advisory Committee (1998-2002, Chair 2000-2002); Vice President’s Selection Committee for University Research Professorships (1998-2000, Chair 2000); Dean of the Graduate School’s Ad Hoc Committee for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (1999-2000); member of President’s comprehensive Capital Campaign for $600-million (1999-2000), spoke as faculty representative at opening ceremonies (Fall 2000); President’s Task Force on Research and Graduate Studies (1998-99, Chair, Humanities subcommittee); Chancellor’s Task Force on Undergraduate Studies (1998-99); Chancellor’s Liaison for University Libraries (1991-99); fund-raiser representing Arts and Sciences for new Commonwealth Library (1994-1995); Chancellor’s Library Area Advisory Committee (1998); University Academic Computing Subcommittee (1994-1995)
Some Invited Lectures
(Omitting frequent lectures for the Modern Language Association, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and regional and local presentations.) University of Toronto; Newberry Library, Chicago; Arnamagnean Institute, Copenhagen; Loyola University of Chicago; University of Tennessee at Knoxville; Boston University; Purdue University; University of Wisconsin; Yale University; IBM-United Kingdom Scientific Centre, Winchester; The Medieval Seminar and the English Faculty, Oxford University; Kings College, University of London; Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Cambridge University; Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials, University of Illinois; Texas A&M University; University of West Virginia; The Madden Society, British Library and British Museum; the Research Group for Manuscript Studies, The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Research and Development Department, The British Library; University of Washington; Simon Fraser University; University of British Columbia; the Vancouver Medieval Symposium; the Library School, University College London; Association of Research Libraries and Association of University Presses; Department of Manuscripts, Royal Library of Denmark; Harvard University; University of New Mexico; National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.; Digital Libraries Symposium, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois; University of Calgary; University of Michigan; Bede’s World Museum, Jarrow, England; Kansas University; Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; University of Michigan; University of Catania; University of Calabria; NEH Summer Seminar, The Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University (twice); keynote for Digital Resources in the Humanities 1999, London, England; International Foundation of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Sofia, Bulgaria, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; International Association of University Professors of English, Bamberg, Germany; DELOS/NSF Working Group Meeting, Florence, Italy; Vassar College; National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Beckman Institute, University of Illinois; The International Association of University Professors of English, Vancouver, B.C.; St HildaÕs College, Oxford (DIAMM); Symposium on the Alfredian Boethius, Oxford University; University of Calgary; University of Tennessee; The British Library; Plenary for Society for Textual Scholarship.