Erik Wade

My research interrogates race and sexuality in the medieval world. Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm and I are writing a book entitled Race in Early Medieval England, under contract with Cambridge University Press. My solo book project, Lust in Translation, considers how the earliest English authors created the idea of a place called “England”—and a people called the “English”—by talking about sex and rape. Official texts from bishops and kings claimed that the English acted with greater sexual morality than other groups, yet non-official English literature betrays their anxiety about their own rape culture.

I’m a CNY native, and I did my undergraduate work at Onondaga Community College and then SUNY Oswego. I received my PhD from Rutgers University and taught at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in Germany for four years before returning to SUNY Oswego to teach. I sit on the Advisory Board for the journal Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory. I teach courses on medieval and premodern global literature, premodern identity and discrimination, critical theory, medieval travel literature, and medieval ghost stories. I am the current Director of the Minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Publications

Manuscripts in progress

• Lust in Translation: Sexuality, Race, and National Identity in Early Medieval English Literature.
• (with Mary Rambaran-Olm) Race in Early Medieval England (Elements series). Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Articles

• “Reading the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt with Abbot Hadrian of Africa: The Influence of Byzantine Readings of the Song of Songs on Early Medieval England,” The Song of Songs Through the Ages: Studies on the Song's Reception History in Different Times, Contexts, and Genres, edited by Annette Schellenberg, De Gruyter, 89-114, 2023.
• “A Story About Beaver Slavery in Arabic, Northern European, and Persian Sources,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 1-4, 2023.
• (with Mary Rambaran-Olm) “What’s in a Name?: The Past and Present Racism in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Studies.” Yearbook of English Studies, 52, 135-153, 2022.
• “‘As Black as They Were Before’: The History of Skin Colour and the History of the Holy Rood-Tree.” — Early Middle English 4.1, 51-82, 2022.
• “Skeletons in the Closet: Erasing Queer and Trans Issues in Early Medieval Scholarship.” — ELH 89.2, 281-316, 2022.
• (with Ambereen Dadabhoy), “Debacle over review reveals racism in academy (opinion).” Inside Higher Education (2022)
• (with Mary Rambaran-Olm), “The Many Myths of the Term ‘Anglo-Saxon.’” Smithsonian Magazine (2021).
• “Representation and Inclusion in the Old English Classroom.” — Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 27.2, 1-21 (2020).
• “The Birds and the Bedes: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum,” — postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 11.4, 425-33 (2020).
• “The Beast with Two Backs: Bestiality, Sex Between Men, and Byzantine Theology in the Paenitentiale Theodori.” — Journal of Medieval Worlds 2.1, 11-26 (2020)
• “The Pig’s Doom: Animal Butchery, Gender Relations, and a New Solution for Durham Proverb 10.” — SELIM. Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 25, 187-92 (2020).
• “Ower Felaws Blake: Blackface, Race, and Muslim Conversion in the Digby Mary Magdalene,” Exemplaria 31.1, 22-45 (February 2019).
• “Pater Don't Preach: Byzantine Theology, Female Sexuality, and Histories of Global Encounter in the ‘English’ Paenitentiale Theodori,” The Medieval Globe 4.2, 1-29 (November 2018).
• “Language, Letters, and Augustinian Origins in the Old English Poetic Solomon and Saturn I,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 117.2, 160-184 (April 2018).

Education

• PhD., English, Rutgers University (2018)
• M.A., English, University of Oregon (2011)
• B.A., English and History, Minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Oswego (2009)
• A.A., Humanities, Onondaga Community College (2007)

Classes taught

Spring 2024:

ENG 465 - Premodern Queer/Trans Literature

ENG 310 - Medieval Literature

ENG 304 - Literary Criticism