Rate My Professor John Bowers

John M. Bowers, Ph.D., is a Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), specializing in medieval English literature. He joined UNLV in 1987 as Associate Professor, was promoted to Full Professor in 1992, and served as Chair of the English Department from 1997 to 2000. Prior positions include Assistant Professor at Princeton University (1984-1987), Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities at the California Institute of Technology (1982-1984), Assistant Professor at Hamilton College (1980-1982), and Lecturer at the University of Virginia (1978-1980). His academic background includes a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia (1978), M.Phil. (1976) and B.Phil. (1975) from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, M.A. from the University of Virginia (1973), and B.A. magna cum laude from Duke University (1971).

Bowers' research interests encompass Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain Poet, and connections to modern authors like J.R.R. Tolkien. Key publications include Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (Oxford University Press, 2019), which details his discovery of Tolkien’s unpublished Chaucer edition; An Introduction to the Gawain Poet (University Press of Florida, 2012); Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); The Politics of "Pearl": Court Poetry in the Age of Richard II (D.S. Brewer, 2001); The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions (Medieval Institute Publications, 1992, revised 1999); and The Crisis of Will in "Piers Plowman" (Catholic University of America Press, 1986). He has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, contributed to encyclopedias, and authored the novel End of Story (Sunstone Press, 2010). Bowers has received the Guggenheim Fellowship (2000-2001), NEH Fellowships (1992-1993, others), Huntington Library Summer Fellowship (2002), Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award (2001), multiple Morris Awards for Excellence in Scholarship (2020, 2013, 2001), Mythopoeic Scholarship Award (2021), UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award, and Nevada Regents’ Teaching Award. He produced The Great Courses series The Western Literary Canon in Context (2008) and has delivered lectures including keynotes at Merton College, Oxford.