Em Kightley
Associate Professor of English
M.A., Queen's University (Kingston), 2001
PhD., University of Western Ontario, 2009
Office: Griffin 227
Phone: 337-482-5507
E-mail: em.kightley@louisiana.edu
Pronouns: she/her
Teaching and Research Areas
Old English language and literature, Victorian medievalism (especially romances and translations), Middle English language and literature, Old Norse/Icelandic literature, fantasy fiction, the history of the English language, translation and adaptation, and queer theory.
Noteworthy
Em Kightley joined the faculty in 2014, after five years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds a B.Sc. in Human Biology (the University of Toronto), as well as an M.A. in English (Queen's University, Kingston) and a Ph.D. in English (the University of Western Ontario). Dr. Kightley's research has two main focuses: medieval English literature and medievalism (the study of modern re-imaginings of the medieval period). She is particularly interested in representations of racial, ethnic, familial, and other communities within these various literatures. She has published articles on Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, Charles Kingsley, William Morris, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Publications
“Repetition, Class, and the Unnamed Speakers in Beowulf.” Literary Speech Acts of the Medieval North: Essays Inspired by the Works of Thomas A. Shippey. Eds. Eric Shane Bryan and Alexander Vaughan Ames. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020. 141-56.
“The Brothers of Beowulf : Fraternal Tensions and the Reticent Style.” ELH 83 (2016): 407–29.
“Socialism and Translation: The Folks of William Morris's Beowulf .” Studies in Medievalism 23 (2014): 167-88.
“Hereward the Dane and the English, but Not the Saxon: Kingsley's Racial Anglo-Saxonism.” Studies in Medievalism 21 (2012): 89-118.
“Communal Interdependence in The Battle of Maldon .” Studia Neophilologica 82 (2010): 58-68.
“Reinterpreting Threats to Face: The Use of Politeness in Beowulf , ll. 407-472.” Neophilologus 93 (2009): 511-20.
“Heorot or Meduseld?: Tolkien's Use of Beowulf in ‘The King of the Golden Hall.'” Mythlore 24.3-4 (2006): 119-34.