Steele Nowlin

Professional Bio

After earning my Ph.D. at Penn State in 2007, I taught at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where I was an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English before returning to Penn State in 2017 as a Teaching Professor. My teaching spans a wide variety of undergraduate literature and writing classes, including medieval and early modern literature, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the history of the English language, science fiction, medievalism, first-year composition, and professional writing, as well as honors seminars, first-year seminars, and interdisciplinary, team-taught, and linked classes.

In addition to teaching, I’ve served in a variety of administrative roles, including heading a department, coordinating institution-wide academic assessment, conducting employee performance and promotion reviews, hiring and mentoring new faculty, running faculty professional development workshops, and directing undergraduate honors and internship programs.

My research focuses on late medieval literature, and I've published several articles and book chapters on the English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, as well as a book, Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention, which examines the relationship between poetic invention and affective experience in late medieval poetry. My current research interests include studying how strategies of world building in contemporary speculative fiction might overlap with methods of narrative representation in late medieval literature, and exploring the challenges of implementing High Impact Practices in undergraduate General Education classes.