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Erik Wade

Erik Wade

Assistant Professor,
English

Contact Information

317 Marano Campus Center
315.312.2616
[email protected]

Office hours

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: 1:45PM-2:45PM, or by appointment

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

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