Dana Oswald, Ph.D.
Department Chair and Professor of English
Literature and Languages Department
Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2005
- EMAIL:
- oswald@uwp.edu
Dana Oswald is Professor of English, Chair of Literatures and Languages, and Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has published two books, Conceiving Bodies: Reproduction in Early Medieval English Medicine (Manchester UP, 2024) and Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature (Boydell and Brewer, 2010). She is at work on a third book entitled Conditional Futures: Impossible Intersections in a Medieval Past.
Dr. Oswald teaches courses in medieval literature, gender and sexuality studies, the history of the English language, literary theory, and epic and mythology. Through UW Madison’s Odyssey Beyond Bars Prison Education Initiative, she teaches freshman composition at Racine Correctional Institution.
Areas of Expertise
- Old English
- Medicine
- Feminisms
- Medieval
- Women
Teaching Interests
Old and Middle English literature, Literary Theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History of the English Language, Epic and Mythology
Research Interests
Dr. Oswald's work looks at literary and cultural traditions of the past as a way of thinking about the present. Her work on monsters interrogates alterior bodies as a way of understanding social, sexual, and gender transgressions that both repel and appeal. In her work on early medieval women's medicine, she considers historical practices and language around women's bodies to determine both the kinds of practices available to and attitudes towards women's reproductive bodies. She demonstrates that while early practice might have been dangerous or ineffective for women, it also allowed a space for women to retain bodily autonomy that speaks to current debates around the bodies of people with uteruses. Her newest book project takes up the ideas laid out in these first two books to consider the question of medieval "what ifs." By linking investigations of grammar, monstrous communities, storytelling, healing practices, and the structure of the authority and the university, she looks forward to finding hinge-points at which that which is impossible in the past, becomes that which is the future.
Consulting Interests
Dr. Oswald has served as an outside reviewer for books and articles, as well as serving as an external reviewer for departmental program reviews.
- Conditional Futures: Impossible Intersections in a Medieval Past
- Alterior Bodies: Disability, Hyperability, and the Medieval Monster. Oxford University Press
- (2024) Conceiving Bodies: Reproduction in Early Medieval English Medicine. Manchester University Press
- Teaching History of the English Language in a Global Digital Community
- "Put the Prayer on her Girdle": Bald's Missing Remedies
- Pregnancy and Knowledge in the Old English Medical Tradition. Brepols/ Generations series
- "Monaðgecynd and flewsan: Wanted and Unwanted Monthly Courses in Old English Medical Texts.”. Amsterdam University Press
- (2012) "Monstrous Gender: Geographies of Ambiguity.". Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous: A multi-disciplinary research companion. , 30 pp.
- (2010) Monsters, Gender, and Sexuality in Medieval England. . Boydell and Brewer Gender and Medieval Studies Series, 250 pp.
- (2010) Unnatural Women, Invisible Mothers: Monstrous Female Bodies in the Wonders of the East.. Special Monstrosity edition: Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art., 30 pp.
- (2010) “The lyf so short, the crafts so long to lerne”: Reading Chaucer in Translation in the British Literature Survey Class. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 28 pp.
- (2010) "Seduced by the Monster.". Medieval Herald: Boydell and Brewer Blog, 2 pp.
- (2009) “Wig under Wætere: Beowulf’s Revision of the Fight with Grendel’s Mother.” . Exemplaria, 19 pp.
Teaching Awards
-
(2013)
Sigma Tau Delta Excellence in Teaching — Sigma Tau Delta, Tau Psi Chapter
The students of Sigma Tau Delta award one professor each year with this teaching award. I was selected via a vote.
Research/Creative Awards
- (2016) UW System Fellow — Institute for Research in the Humanities
Departmental Service
- (2019) — Writers Conference Organizer
University Service
- Committee Member — Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Steering Committee
- (2025) Committee Chair — Performance Review Committee
- (2024) Special Institutional Assignment — PARC Writing Tutor Liaison
- (2024) Committee Member — IPED Executive Committee
- (2022) Committee Member — Committee on Research and Creative Activity
- (2014) Committee Member — IPED Executive Committee
Professional Service
- (2011) — High school and college students; the College Board
Public Service
- (2025) Workshop Organizer — Intellectual Curiosities: Reading the Iliad
ENGL 204 - Writing for Business/Industry
ENGL 266 - Literary Analysis
ENGL 316 - British Literature to 1500
ENGL 364 - Epic and Mythology
ENGL 380 - The English Language
ENGL 451 - Studies in Literature/Culture:
ENGL 494 - Internship in Writing/Editing
ENGL 499 - Independent Study:
WGSS 469 - Women as Writers/Characters: