Dr. Richard Utz

Dr. Richard Utz

Richard Utz is a “University of Northern Iowa Distinguished Scholar” and Professor of English. He studied English and German literature and language at the University of Regensburg (Germany) and Williams College (USA), specializing in Early English literature and linguistics and attending classes taught by Maureen Fries, Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hahn, Otto Hietsch, Sherron Knopp, and Ernst von Reusner. In 1991, he received his doctorate in English and German philology from the University of Regensburg, and he has also taught at the Pädagogische Hochschule Dresden and the University of Tübingen.

At UNI, Utz teaches English literature from Chaucer through Chatwin, and his scholarship centers on medieval studies, medievalism, the history of English studies as a discipline, the formation of cultural memories and identities, and travel writing.

He is founder and coeditor of Brepols Publishers’ book series, Disputatio (with G. Donavin and C. Nederman), and of Prolepsis: The Heidelberg Review of English Studies (with T. Rommel and P.P. Schnierer). He is the author of Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology (2002) and Literarischer Nominalismus im Spätmittelalter (1990), editor of Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts (1995), and co-editor of Medieval Forms of Argument: Disputation and Debate (with G. Donavin and C. Poster, 2002); Discourses of Power: Grammar and Rhetoric in the Late Middle Ages (with C. Poster, 1999); Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie Workman (with T. Shippey, 1998); Transformation, Translation, and Transubstantiation in the Late Middle Ages (with C. Poster, 1998); Constructions of Time in the Late Middle Ages (with C. Poster, 1997); Nominalism and Literary Discourse (with H. Keiper and C. Bode, 1997); and The Late Medieval Epistle (with C. Poster, 1996).

His essays have appeared in Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, The European Legacy, Fremdsprachenunterricht, Medievalia et Humanistica, Das Mittelalter, On-Line Research Book in Medieval Studies, Perspicuitas, Philologie im Netz, Studies in Medievalism, and The Year’s Work in Medievalism, and he has reviewed publications for Anglia, Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Arthuriana, Carmina Philosophiae, Christianity and Literature, Fremdsprachenunterricht, Literatur in Bayern, The Medieval Review, North American Review, Philosophy and Literature, South Atlantic Review, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, and Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik.

At UNI, Utz has been the recipient of Sigma Tau Delta’s “English Professor of the Year Award;” the “College of Humanities and Fine Arts Teaching Award;” the “Donald N. McKay Research Award;” and the “Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence.”

Contact Dr. Utz