Dana Oswald, Ph.D.

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.

Selected Publications

: 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: The students of Sigma Tau Delta award one professor each year with this teaching award. I was selected via a vote., Sigma Tau Delta Excellence in Teaching, Sigma Tau Delta, Tau Psi Chapter

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