Western Michigan University

Faculty Member, English

Professor

College of Arts and Sciences

About

Richard Utz is Professor (Chair, 2007-2011) in the English Department at Western Michigan University. Before coming to WMU, he was a University Distinguished Scholar and Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. 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 Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hahn, Otto Hietsch, Sherron Knopp, Ernst von Reusner, and Maureen Fries. In 1990, he received his doctorate in English and German philology from the University of Regensburg, and he has also taught at the Pädagogische Hochschule Dresden (1990-1991) and the University of Tübingen (1996-1998).
Utz has taught English literature from Chaucer through Chatwin, and his scholarship centers on medieval studies, medievalism, the history of English studies as a discipline, reception study, the permutations of science-like and humanistic philology, and the formation of cultural memories and identities. He is founder (and, until 2009, co-editor) of Brepols Publishers’ book series, Disputatio (with G. Donavin and C. Nederman), of Prolepsis: The Heidelberg Review of English Studies (with T. Rommel and P.P. Schnierer), and of medievally speaking: medievalism in review, and author and (co)editor of more than a dozen book-length publications. 
His essays have appeared in Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Arthuriana, Erfurt Electronic Studies in English, The European Legacy, European Journal of English Studies, Florilegium, Fremdsprachenunterricht, Medievalia et Humanistica, Das Mittelalter, Oxford Guide to Chaucer, Perspicuitas, Philologie im Netz, Studies in Medievalism, Transfiguration, UNIversitas, 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, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Literatur in Bayern, The Medieval Review, Monatshefte, North American Review, Perspicuitas, Philosophy and Literature, Review of English Studies, South Atlantic Review, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, and Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik.
Utz has been the recipient, at the University of Regensburg, of the Dr. Katharina Seiler Award for Outstanding Work in the Field of English Studies and, at the University of Northern Iowa, 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;” the "Dr. Philip Hubbard Award for Outstanding Educator," the "Distinguished Scholar Award," and the “Iowa State Board of Regents Award for Faculty Excellence.” Since 2009, he has been serving as the President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism.

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