MARK VESSEY

Areas of special interest: Jerome, Augustine and Latin late antiquity; Erasmus and the literary Renaissance; classical and Christian traditions in European literature; scripture(s) and literature; literary theory; bibliography/history of books.

 

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Curriculum Vitae
(Updated: September 2005)

 

Born in Sheffield, England, 30 May 1959
Permanent resident of Canada since November 1988
Married to Maya Yazigi

• Open (1977-80) and Foundation (1980-81) Scholar, Queens’ College, Cambridge
• B.A. (First Class, Part 2) and M.A. in English, University of Cambridge, 1980, 1984

• Scholar of the British Institute in Paris, Boursier du Gouvernement Français, 1982-83
• Auditeur libre, Université de Paris-IV (Sorbonne), 1982-83
  - “Langues et littératures de l’antiquité tardive” (J. Fontaine, A. Mandouze)
• Senior Scholar, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1987-88
• D.Phil. in Literae Humaniores, University of Oxford, 1988
  Thesis: “Ideas of Christian Writing in Late Roman Gaul” (J. F. Matthews)

• Killam Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia, 1989-90
  “Reception of the Church Fathers in the English Reformation and Renaissance”

• Assistant (1990), Associate (1995), Full (2005) Professor of English, UBC
• Chair of the Graduate Program in English and Associate Head of Department, 2005-
• Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Literature / Christianity and Culture, 2000-05
• Senior Fellow (1996-2005) and Acting Principal (1998-99), Green College, UBC
• Faculty Associate, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC, 1999-
• Killam Research Prize Winner, UBC, 2005

• Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford, 1997
• Visiting Professor, Endowed Chair in Augustinian Studies, Villanova University, 2000
• Visiting Researcher, Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, Université de Genève, 2004

• Associate editor, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 1998-
• Editorial board member, Studies in the Reformation [monograph series], 1998-
• Editorial board member, Postscripts: A Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 2004-

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Books

Christian Latin Writers in Late Antiquity and their Texts. Collected Studies Series. Aldershot and Burlington, NY: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2005.

(co-editor, with Karla Pollmann) Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to “Confessions”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

(co-editor, with James W. Halporn) Cassiodorus: “Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning” and “On the Soul”. Translated Texts for Historians. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004.

(co-editor, with Hilmar M. Pabel) Holy Scripture Speaks: The Production and Reception of Erasmus’ “Paraphrases on the New Testament”. Erasmus Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

(co-editor, with William E. Klingshirn) The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus. Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

(co-editor, with Karla Pollmann and Allan D. Fitzgerald) History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New Essays on Augustine’s “City of God”. Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1999. [also published in Augustinian Studies 30.2 (1999)]

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Special issues or part-issues of journals, as editor

“The Study of Augustine, 1950-2000: Evolving Disciplinary Contexts.” Papers from a roundtable at the conference on “Augustine and the Disciplines” held at Villanova University in 2000. Augustinian Studies 32.2 (2001): 177-206.

(with Virginia Burrus) “The Markings of Heresy: Body, Text, and Community in Late Ancient Christianity.” Select papers from a workshop of “Heresy and Heretics in the Middle Ages” held at Green College, UBC, in 1994. Journal of Early Christian Studies 4.4 (1996).

(with Nancy Frelick) “The Reader, the Subject, and the Self in Early Modern Europe.” Select proceedings of the 1993 Pacific Northwest Renaissance Conference. Renaissance and Reformation 18.4 (1994).

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Selected recent articles

“Theory, or the Dream of the Book (Mallarmé to Blanchot).” The Early Christian Book. Proceedings of a conference held at the Catholic University of America in 2002. Ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming in 2006.

“Vera et aeterna monumenta: Jerome’s Catalogue of Early Christian Writers and the Premises of Erasmian Humanism.” Proceedings of a conference on “Die Patristik in der Frühen Neuzeit” held in Bretten (Germany) in 2003. Ed. Gunther Frank and Markus Wriedt. Forthcoming in 2005.

“Reading like Angels: Derrida and Augustine on the Book (for a History of Literature).” Augustine and Postmodernism: Confession and Circumfession. Ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2005. 173-211.

“Women of Letters?” [response to an essay by Catherine Conybeare on Augustine’s correspondence with women]. Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages. Ed. Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. 73-96.

“History, Fiction, and Figuralism in Book 8 of Augustine’s Confessions.” The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Christianity: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography. Ed. Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 237-57.

“Latin Literary History after Saint Jerome: The Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri of Sicco Polenton.” Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 6 (2004): 303-11.

“Erasmus’ Lucubrations and the Renaissance Life of Texts.” 24th annual Erasmus Birthday Lecture. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 24 (2004): 23-51.

“Jerome and Rufinus.” The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature. Ed. Frances M. Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Louth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 318-27.

“Sacred Letters of the Law: The Emperor’s Hand in Late Roman (Literary) History.” Antiquité Tardive 11 (2003): 345-58. [review article]

“From Cursus to Ductus: Figures of Writing in Western Late Antiquity (Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Bede).” European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Ed. Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2002. 47-103.

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Selected work in preparation and/or submitted for publication

“Quid facit cum Horatio Hieronymus? Christian Latin Poetry and Scriptural Poetics.”

“Renaissance Views of Early Christian Culture and the End of Antiquity.” For The Blackwell Companion to Late Antiquity. Ed. Philip Rousseau.

“Literary Methodologies.” For The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. Ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter.

(as editor) The Blackwell Companion to Augustine. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford.

(as general editor) A Historical Guide to the Reception of Augustine. 3 vols. Oxford University Press.

Erasmus: Annotations on Luke. Vol. 53 of the Collected Works of Erasmus. University of Toronto Press. Translation, notes and introduction.

Augustine: Confessions. Barnes & Noble Classics. Introduction and notes.

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