Contact: jkellogg@hawaii.edu
Professor Kellogg has been teaching in the English Department since receiving her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of California at Berkeley in 1979. Her literary interests focus on classical and medieval texts, based on the conviction that knowledge of cultural roots facilitates a profound understanding of the shape and resonance of the present. This dimension informs all of the courses she regularly teaches, which include Medieval British Literature, Chaucer, Backgrounds of Western Literature, Medieval Women Writers, and the Legacy of King Arthur. A common thread in both teaching and research has been situating texts within their socio-economic contexts, as she has done in her book, Medieval Artistry and Exchange: Economic Institutions, Society, and Literary Form in Old French Narrative. Her most recent research has focused on the life and works of the fifteenth-century French writer, Christine de Pizan. Her work in developing the biennial conference on “Literature and Hawai‘i’s Children” has brought home to her the importance of understanding how early in one’s life literature impacts on the formation of personal and cultural identities. As a result, some of her work has dealt with the influence of medieval literature on recent fantasy and children’s works, and includes the guest-editorship of a special issue on Arthurian children’s literature in Arthuriana. She is founding president of Children’s Literature Hawai‘i,