New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession

This essay explores the distinctive value of arts and humanities collaborations in the context of the global COVID pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, the author (a literary critic) worked with composer Mark Volker, performance ensemble Chatterbird, and visual artist Christine Rogers to write and perform a chamber music based on two medieval body-soul debate poems, "Als I lay in a winteris nyt" and "In a thestri stude I stod." That creative project highlights how the body-soul debate poems resonate with representations of COVID deaths in contemporary popular media, exploring the psychological and social barriers to reckoning with mortality in ways that can transform community for the living.