Rate Professor Rita Copeland

Academic Background

Ph.D., University of Oxford.

Research Interests

Medieval literature (English, Latin, French); intellectuals, learning, and literacy in medieval Europe; literary theory from ancient to early modern; history of rhetoric from ancient to early modern; classical reception in English literature; emotion in medieval rhetoric.

Appointments

Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania; Rosenberg Chair in the Humanities.

Awards

Medieval Academy Haskins Prize, 2025, for Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages.

Publications

• Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, Oxford University Press, 2021.
• Editor, The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Vol. 1: 800-1558, Oxford University Press, 2016.
• The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (co-edited with P. Struck), Cambridge University Press.
• Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475 (with I. Sluiter).
• Pedagogy, Intellectuals and Dissent in the Middle Ages; Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages.

Additional Contributions

Discussed new book on classical reception in Penn Current.