New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession

This essay showcases the pedagogic philosophy and legacy of UC Santa Barbara Professor Emerita Aranye Fradenburg Joy, a Chaucerian distinguished by her contributions to feminist, psychoanalytic and new historicist thought. The piece features an interview between Fradenburg Joy’s former PhD student, University of Iowa Professor Kathy Lavezzo, in which Fradenburg describes her approach to teaching as well as her experiences with a host of teaching instructors and mentors. In addition, Lavezzo shares and discusses some of the notes she took as a TA for Fradenburg’s Canterbury Tales class, and recalls, with UC Berkeley Professor Maura Nolan, Fradenburg’s teaching style and its considerable impact on them as students, teachers and researchers. Ultimately, this piece registers intellectual gifts handed down by not only an important Chaucerian, but also a genealogy of professors who have passed to the next generation valuable knowledge on teaching a paradigmatic medieval work.