Faculty Profile
Chelsea Skalak
Associate Professor of English (2015)
Contact Information
East College
717-245-1064
Bio
Professor Skalak is a teacher and scholar of medieval British literature. Her research interests include medieval gender and sexuality, legal studies, female authorship, and digital humanities. She has published articles on medieval romance, marital rape in The Canterbury Tales, and teaching the global Middle Ages. Recent courses include Chaucer's Women, Medieval Women Writers, King Arthur from Medieval to Modern, and Mapping the Global Middle Ages. She is a contributing faculty member in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Education
- B.A., Northwestern University, 2008
- M.A., University of Virginia, 2011
- Ph.D., 2015
2026-2027 Academic Year
Spring 2027
FMST 210 Literary Adaptations
Cross-listed with ENGL 222-01. In some ways, literature is the history of telling the same stories again and again. A medieval romance becomes a Shakespearean play, an 18th-century lyric poem, a 19th-century novel, and finally a 20th-century film. Today, the proliferation of parodies, critiques, re-tellings, and remakes extends the world of adaptation still further. In this class, we will study the theory of adaptation as we explore how stories cross genres, time periods, and cultural contexts. In this writing-intensive workshop class, we will consider how new technologies enable and alter the kinds of stories that can be told, and what criteria we use to evaluate them.
ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.
ENGL 222 Literary Adaptations
Cross-listed with FMST 210-06. In some ways, literature is the history of telling the same stories again and again. A medieval romance becomes a Shakespearean play, an 18th-century lyric poem, a 19th-century novel, and finally a 20th-century film. Today, the proliferation of parodies, critiques, re-tellings, and remakes extends the world of adaptation still further. In this class, we will study the theory of adaptation as we explore how stories cross genres, time periods, and cultural contexts. In this writing-intensive workshop class, we will consider how new technologies enable and alter the kinds of stories that can be told, and what criteria we use to evaluate them.
ENGL 331 Medieval Romance
In the Middle Ages, "romance" became the name for stories written in the vernacular that chronicled the adventures of an aristocratic hero. Romance as a genre evolved to both romanticize and critique the lives of the aristocracy, symbolized in the heroic knight (or princess in disguise), the quest, and the search for the Holy Grail. It also became the medium through which authors and readers explored and subverted issues of class, gender, sexuality, and national identity. In this class, we will explore these complex issues through the lens of this most popular of medieval genres.