Rita Copeland is Appointed the Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor

Rita Copeland of the Department of Classical Studies has been named the Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests span many fields and periods and include medieval literature; intellectuals, learning, and literacy in medieval Europe; the reception of classical traditions in medieval and early modern Europe; literary theory from ancient to early modern; and the history of rhetoric.

Copeland has a secondary appointment in the Department of English and is a member of the graduate group in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, of which she is a former chair. Copeland recently co-authored Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300-1475 with Ineke Sluiter and co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Allegory with Peter Struck, Associate Professor of Classical Studies. Her previous books include Pedagogy, Intellectuals and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning and Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Additionally, she is the co-founder and co-editor of the Medieval Cultures Series from the University of Minnesota Press.

In fall 2010, Copeland was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem and worked in the research group Encountering Scripture. She is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies this spring.

This chair was established by Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg, C’63. Mr. Rosenberg is a partner in the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. Mrs. Rosenberg is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and is the co-founder and president of the initiative for the university’s new Center for Executive Women at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School.