B ENJAMIN A.

S ALTZMAN
28 March 2019
Department of English Language and Literature University of Chicago
[email protected] 1115 E. 58th Street Chicago, IL 60637

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
University of Chicago
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature and the College (2017- )
California Institute of Technology
Visiting Associate, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences (2017-2018)
Weisman Postdoctoral Instructor in Medieval British Literature (2014-2017)

EDUCA TION
University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., English (2014); Ph.D., Medieval Studies (2014); M.A., English (2010)
Pace University, Pforzheimer Honors College
B.A. summa cum laude, English with a minor in Classical and Medieval Studies (2007)

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS
Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England (forthcoming,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Thinking of the Middle Ages: Postwar Scholarship and the Study of the Medieval, ed. with R. D. Perry and afterword
by Martin E. Jay (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2021)

ARTICLES
“Vt hkskdkxt: Early Medieval Cryptography, Textual Errors, and Scribal Agency”
Speculum 93.4 (2018): 975-1009
“Secrecy and the Hermeneutic Potential in Beowulf”
PMLA 133.1 (2018): 36-55
“Community, Joy, and the Intimacy of Narrative in Beowulf” in Dating Beowulf: New Essays on Intimacy,
ed. Daniel Remein and Erica Weaver (forthcoming, University of Manchester Press, 2020)
“From Old English to World Englishes” in Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language: Pedagogy
in Practice, ed. Mary Hayes and Allison Burkette (Oxford University Press, 2017): 237-52
“The Friar, the Summoner, and their Techniques of Erasure”
The Chaucer Review 52.4 (2017): 363-95
“Towards the Middle Ages to Come: The Temporalities of Walking with W. Morris, H. Adams, and
Especially H. D. Thoreau” postmedieval 5.2 (2014): 235-52
“The Mind, Perception and the Reflexivity of Forgetting in Alfred’s Pastoral Care”
Anglo-Saxon England 42 (2013): 147-82
“William Morris’s ‘Golden Wings’ as a Poetic Response to the ‘Delicate Sentiment’ of Tennyson’s
‘Mariana’” Victorian Poetry 49.3 (2011): 285-300
“Writing Friendship, Mourning the Friend in Late Anglo-Saxon Rules of Confraternity”
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41.2 (2011): 251-91

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES & BRIEF NOTICES

“St. Margaret” in Anglo-Saxon Women: A Florilegium, ed. Emily Butler, Irina Dumitrescu, Hilary E. Fox
(forthcoming)
“Dunstan,” “Glastonbury Abbey,” and “The Junius Manuscript” in The Encyclopedia of British Medieval
Literature, ed. Siân Echard and Robert Rouse (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017): 711-13, 867-69, and
1108-10.
“On the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium: A Brief Report on a (New) New York Community”
Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland Newsletter 22 (2006): 5-6

REVIEWS
Larissa Tracy, ed., Medieval and Early Modern Murder (Boydell Press, 2018): reviewed in Arthuriana
Malcolm R. Godden, ed. and trans., The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius,
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Harvard, 2016): reviewed in Speculum 93.4 (2018): 1203-5
Patrick P. O’Neill, ed. and trans., Old English Psalms, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Harvard, 2016):
reviewed in Speculum 92.4 (2017): 1228-30
Peter Baker, Introduction to Old English, Second Edition (Blackwell, 2007): reviewed in Comitatus: A Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39 (2008): 229-30
Magnús Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England in Icelandic Medieval Texts (Toronto, 2005): reviewed in Comitatus: A
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 38 (2007): 222-24

FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, & GRANTS

FELLOWSHIPS
NEH Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities (2017-18)
Distinguished Faculty Fellow of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (2014) – Declined
Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (2013-14)
Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, UC Berkeley (2013)
Haas Junior Scholars Fellowship, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley (2011-12 and 2012-13)
Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate Division & Department of English, UC Berkeley (2011-12)
Joseph E. Pryor Graduate Fellowship, Alpha Chi National Honor Society (2011) $5
Beazell Fellowship, Department of English, UC Berkeley (2008-10)

HONORS & AWARDS

Best Article Prize (Biennial), Honorable Mention, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2013)
Lynne Grundy Memorial Trust Research Award for Scholars of Old English (2012) ₤

-2-
SALTZMAN

Barbara H. Kurtz Award for an outstanding academic record, Department of English, UC Berkeley (2010)
Benjamin Putnam Kurtz Essay Prize, Department of English, UC Berkeley (2010) $
Kirk Underhill Graduate Paper Prize, Center for British Studies, UC Berkeley (2010) $600
Founders’ Prize, Medieval Association of the Pacific, Runner-up for best graduate student paper (2007)

TEACHING AWARDS
ASCIT Teaching Award, Academics and Research Committee, Caltech (2016)
Award for Teaching Excellence, Humanities and Social Sciences Division, Caltech (2015)
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, Teaching & Resource Center, UC Berkeley (2013)

GRANTS
Signature Course Grant, Humanities Collegiate Division, University of Chicago (2019)
Summer Research Grant, Graduate Division, UC Berkeley (2013)
Dissertation Research Grant, Center for British Studies, UC Berkeley (2012) $3,500
Pre-dissertation Research Grant, Center for British Studies, UC Berkeley (2010) $3,500
Paleography Working Group Grant, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley (2010-11) $950
Pre-conference Workshop Travel Grant, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (2009)
UC Regents’ Summer Research Grants, UC Berkeley (2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012) $

LECTUR ES & PRESENTATIONS

INVITED LECTURES
“Ukofb: Secrecy, Riddles, and the Hermeneutics of Humility in Early Medieval England”
University of Wisconsin-Madison (12 October 2018)
“Prudentius’s Psychomachia and the Visuality of Violence”
Borchard Foundation International Colloquium, Château de la Bretesche, France
“Violence and Order in the Premodern World” (24-27 June 2018)
“Of Secrecy, Saints, and Sea Otters: Witnessing the Supernatural in Anglo-Saxon Hagiography”
University of Southern California, IRG Research Workshop (27-28 February 2014)
“Spiritual Secrecy and the Regulation of Secrets in Anglo-Saxon Monasticism”
Columbia University, Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium (12 November 2012)

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“The Sight of Sin in the Anglo-Saxon Psychomachia Illustrations”
International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, Biennial Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)
“Towards an Early Medieval Ethics of Secrecy”
Medieval and Renaissance Center Annual Conference, NYU (2019)
“The Secret Witness: Anglo-Saxon Hagiography and the Ethics of Concealment”
International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, Biennial Meeting, Honolulu, HI (2017)

-3-
SALTZMAN

“The Place of the Medieval in Modern Hermeneutics: Zumthor, Jauss, and Gadamer”
52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (2017)
Sponsored Session: “Postwar Scholarship and the Study of the Middle Ages”
“St. Margaret and the Refusal to Look”
51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (2016)
Sponsored Session: “Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Prose Saints’ Lives”
“The Secret Seized: Political Epistemology in Anglo-Saxon Law”
California Medieval History Seminar, Huntington Library (2015)
“Et aperti sunt oculi: Towards an Anglo-Saxon Iconography of Shame in the Book of Genesis”
49th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (2014)
Special Session: “In Honor of Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe” (Invited)
“Unbinding Servants and Solving Riddles in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre and the Exeter Book”
Technologies of Knowledge, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley (2013)
“Imitation and Style: The Promise of Comparison in the Case of Aldhelm, ‘Aldhelm,’ and B.”
48th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (2013)
Special Session: “New Comparative Approaches to Anglo-Saxon Literature”
“Local Connections: Micro-Comparison and the Imitation of Aldhelm”
Connected Worlds, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley (2013)
“Alia creatura, ut ukofb: Interpreting Riddles with Riddles in CUL Gg. 5. 35”
EGA Colloquium, UC Berkeley (2012)
“To Erase: The Case of Chaucer’s Friar and Summoner”
Eighteenth Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society, Portland, OR (2012)
Special Session: “Filler, Content, and the Interpretation of Medieval Books”
Opening Remarks: “On Philology and Our Task”
“phi·lol·o·gy,” 8th Annual Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Conf., UC Berkeley (2012)
“The Reflexivity of Forgetting in Alfred’s Pastoral Care”
46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (2011)
Special Session: “Cognitive Approaches to the Middle Ages”
Opening Remarks: “On Reading in the Present: Sei Shōnagong and the Old English Deor”
“Reading the Middle Ages,” International Medieval Studies Conf., UC Berkeley (2011)
“Thoreau’s ‘Walking’: Towards a New Middle Age”
Berkeley-Stanford Conference, UC Berkeley (2010)
“Suspicion, Secrecy, and the Hermeneutics of Elene”
Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Conference, Harvard University (2010)
“IUDEX: Integrating Underlying Digital Editions eXperiment” (Poster)
International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, Memorial University, Newfoundland (2009)
“Seized Secret: The Silence of the Stolen Slave in Ine’s 53rd Law”
Berkeley-Stanford Conference, Stanford University (2009)
“The Stolen Being: An Inquiry into Slavery, Theft, and Testimony in Anglo-Saxon Law”
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conf., ASU (2008)
“Tracing Goscelin’s Spiritual Friendship: The Legacy of Late Anglo-Saxon Sherborne and Its Subversive
Rules of Confraternity,” Medieval Association of the Pacific, UCLA (2007)

-4-
SALTZMAN

Opening Remarks: “On Friendship and the Study of Anglo-Saxon England”
Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Conference, Rutgers University (2006)
“Cor unum et anima una: The Symbolic Order of Friendship in Anglo-Saxon Rules of Confraternity”
Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Conference, Rutgers University (2006)

CAMPUS AND DEPARTMENTAL PRESENTATIONS

“Hands and Eyes: Illustrating an Iconography of Shame in Junius 11”
University of Chicago, Medieval Studies Workshop (11 January 2019)
“On Riddles, Cryptographic Errors, and Intellectual Humility”
University of Chicago, The Franke Institute for the Humanities (31 October 2018)
“Reading Hidden Meaning: Between Hermeneutic Pride and Eschatological Humility”
University of Chicago, English Department Workshop (2 February 2017)
“The Worm and the Philosopher: Riddles, Cryptography, and Pride in one Early Medieval Manuscript”
Caltech, Board of Trustees, HSS Chair’s Council (29 April 2016)

TEAC HING

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
The Middle Ages in Midcentury Thought – Seminar – Ph.D (S. 2020)
Witnessing Medieval Evil: Literature, Art, & the Politics of Observation – Signature – BA (S. 2020)
Introduction to Old English – Med. Research Series I – MA/BA (W. 2019)
Beowulf – Med. Research Series II – MA/BA (S. 2019)
Poetry and the Human – Humanities Core (W. 2019, W. 2020)

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Old English Literature – Advanced Undergraduate Seminar (F. 2015)
History of the English Language – Advanced Undergraduate Seminar (F. 2014; S. 2017)
Witnessing Evil in Early Medieval Literature – Advanced Undergraduate Seminar (F. 2016)
The Philosophy of Language and Thought – Independent Tutorial (F. 2015)
Major British Authors – Freshman Survey (F. 2014, F. 2015)
Medieval Subjectivities – Advanced Undergraduate Seminar (W. 2015)
Imagining the Medieval in the 19th Century – Advanced Undergraduate Seminar (S. 2016)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Reading & Composition: “Creation and Creativity” (Sp. 2013)
Reading & Composition: “Tanto melior: The Rhetoric of Superiority” (F. 2012)
Literature in English through Milton, Teaching Assistant (Sp. 2011; F. 2010)

-5-
SALTZMAN

ADVISING
PH.D. DISSERTATIONS
Kevin Jackson, “Beyond Seeing: Sight and Mind in Old English Literature” (external committee member,
University of New Mexico, in progress)

B.A. THESES
Sirus Han, “The Measure of Humanitiy in Richard Jefferies’ England” (Caltech, 2017)
Adrian H. Ray Avalani, “Humor in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints” (Caltech, 2017) -- Finalist, Senior Thesis Prize

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

CONFERENCES ORGANIZED
Violence + Art: Reflections on the Premodern
Caltech-Huntington Humanities Collaboration, Research Workshop, Caltech (2017)
Speakers: Matthew Sergi (Toronto), Heather Badamo (UCSB), Susanna A. Throop (Ursinus)
Pre-Industrial Technologies of Knowledge
Institute of East Asian Studies, International Conference, UC Berkeley (2013)
Keynotes: Lothar von Falkenhausen (UCLA) and Elaine Treharne (Stanford University)
Connected Worlds
Pre-modern studies conference, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley (2013)
Keynotes: Kevin van Bladel (USC), Asa Simon Mittman (CSU Chico), Grant
Parker (Stanford University), and Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Yale University)
phi·lol·o·gy
Eighth Annual Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Conference, UC Berkeley (2012)
Keynote: Jan Ziolkowski (Harvard University and Dumbarton Oaks)
Reading the Middle Ages
International Graduate Student Conference, UC Berkeley (2011)
Keynote: Rita Copeland (University of Pennsylvania)
Friendship and Community
Second Annual Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium, Rutgers University (2006)

CONFERENCE PANELS ORGANIZED

Post-War Scholarship and the Study of the Middle Ages: I (Curtius) and II (Arendt)
50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI - with R. D. Perry (2015)
Post-War Scholarship and the Study of the Middle Ages: I (Auerbach) and II (Kantorowicz)
49th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI - with R. D. Perry (2014)
Norse by Way of Normandy, New Chaucer Society, Reykjavík, Iceland - with Jeremy DeAngelo (2014)

-6-
SALTZMAN