I consider myself a philologist, literally, a "lover of language." Unlike the linguist who, as a scientist of language, attempts to work towards broader abstract principles, the philologist finds value in the unique historical artifact, seeing it as a moment of connection with a human impulse in the past, however remote. In my case, in recent years, this has taken the form of a series of articles on early Anglo-Saxon artifacts that incorporate texts and pictures: specifically, the very unique Old English Franks Casket and an inscribed gold strip in the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard. I'm interested in early medieval forms of writing, and how knowledge may be represented in physical shape. Always I want to recover as best as possible what someone centuries ago must have meant.

I enjoy teaching all my classes, from English Composition to Old English, and from Literary Analysis to the Medieval Dream Vision. I find in every case that there is always occasion for shared inquiry and discovery in the classroom, and I feel fortunate to be able to interact with students and colleagues in this setting, as well as to be part of the larger community in Pocatello.

Selected Publications

"Reading Word and Picture on the Franks Casket: Centrifugal Meanings and Thematic Non-Coherence." Forthcoming in Viator 45.2 (Summer 2014).

"Dialect and Word Choice in Old English: Two Case Studies with Old English Perception Verbs." Anglia: Journal of English Philology 130.4 (2012): 471-98.

"'Rise Up, Lord, Scatter Your Enemies': Faith and Doubt in the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard." Quidditas: The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association (2012): 232-6.

"The Inscribed Gold Strip in the Staffordshire Hoard: The Text and Script of an early Anglo-Saxon Biblical Inscription." Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 18 (2012): 62-74.

"Traditional Approaches to Monolingual Lexicography." The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Ed. Carol A. Chapelle. Wiley-Blackwell. Published online 5 Nov. 2012, print Jan. 2013.

"The Roman Letters on the Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket." Studia Neophilologica 81 (2009): 17-23.

"The Ghostly Voice of Gossip in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily,'" The Explicator 65 (Summer 2007): 229-32. Rpt. in The Norton Anthology of Literature. New York: Norton, 2010. 701-3.

"Stanc æfter stane (Beowulf, l. 2288): Philology, Narrative Context, and the Waking Dragon." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106.1 (January 2007): 22-44.

"Six Color Words in the Pearl Poet: Middle English Blake, Blayke, Blaht, Blo, Blwe and Ble." Studia Neophilologica (Spring 2000): 156-8.

"The Old English Translation of Aldhelm’s Riddle Lorica." Review of English Studies 48 (1997): 345-349.

"In Praise of Bald Men: A Translation of Hucbald’s Ecloga de calvis." Comitatus 26 (1996): 1-9.

"Words for the Colour Orange in Italian." Quaderni d’italianistica 15 (1994): 137-149.

Courses Taught

• English Composition (1101)
• Honors Humanities I (HONS 1101)
• Critical Writing and Reading (1102)
• Introduction to Literature (1110)
• Introduction to Literary Analysis (2211)
• Survey of English Literature I (2267)
• Grammar and Usage (2280)
• Genre Studies in Prose Fiction - The Short Story Sequence (3323)
• Medieval Literature - Dream Visions of the Later Middle Ages (4462 / 5562)
• Chaucer (4473 / 5573)
• Senior Seminar - Readers' Desires and the Writer's Response (4491)
• Old English (4486 / 5586)
• History of the English Language (4487 / 5587)
• Seminar in Medieval Literature (662)
• Seminar in Modern(ist) Short Story Sequences (6621)

Office: LA 233
Office Phone: 282-2308
kleithom@isu.edu