Leslie J. Workman

Leslie J. Workman ( born March 5, 1927 in Hanwell, London, England; † April 1, 2001 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States) was a private scholar and the founder of the academic Medievalism.

Life

Workman received his education at the London Russell School, then studied at King's College, London University ( BA in History ), and served in the British Army in Egypt, Palestine, and Sudan 1945 until 1948. 1954 he immigrated to the United States, studied history at Columbia University and Ohio State University. Subsequently, he taught at Queens College of the City University of New York, at Muhlenberg College ( Allentown, Pennsylvania ), and the Western College for Women (Oxford, Ohio). In 1983, he married Kathleen Verduin, a professor of American Studies at Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

Work

Workmans of original contribution to cultural studies is to establish a network of scientists who seek to research into the reception of the Middle Ages in post-medieval period. Although since the early 80s without a job, he managed to convince colleagues increasingly on the value of the paradigm " Medievalism ". In 1971 he organized the first conference sections on this topic for the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University ( Kalamazoo, Michigan), founded 1979, still leading journal of the research field, Studies in medievalism, as its editor, he served until 1999, and founded in 1986, the annual international conference on medievalism ( International General Conference on medievalism ). His extraordinary contributions were made in 1998 with a Festschrift, medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman, appreciated.

Publications

• Medievalism. In: Norris J. Lacy (Ed.): The Arthurian Encyclopedia. Garland, New York, 1985, pp. 387-91.
• Medievalism and Romanticism. In: Poetica. 39-40 (1994), 1-34.
• (Ed.) Studies in medievalism, 1979-1999.