Lisa Lampert-Weissig

Jerome and Miriam Katzin Chair in Jewish Civilization

My primary field of training is European Medieval Studies with a focus on the late medieval literature of England and on medieval Jewish-Christian relations. The unique multi-lingual and interdisciplinary environment of UC San Diego’s Literature Department has also allowed me expand my interest in the figure of the outsider across linguistic and temporal boundaries. These outsiders include the legendary Wandering Jew, the vampire and the werewolf in medieval and modern visual arts and literatures in English, German, French, Latin and Yiddish. I see my work in the classroom as integral to my development as a scholar. I am a founding co-editor of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, a Diamond Open Access publication affiliated with the New Chaucer Society.

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Languages: English, Middle English, German, Middle High German, French, Latin, Yiddish

Books

• Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew. University of Michigan Press, 2024. [Open Access]  LINK
• Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies. University of Edinburgh Press, Postcolonial Literary Studies series, eds. Ania Loomba and David Johnson, 2010.  LINK
• Gender and Jewish Difference from Paul to Shakespeare. University of Pennsylvania Press, Middle Ages Series, March 2004  LINK

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Melmoth Irreconcilable? Supersessionism and Jewish and Christian Responses to the Wandering Jew Legend,” Gothic Studies 26 (2): 180-97.
• “Encounters in the Early Archive,” Rejoinder 9, Spring 2024.  LINK
• “The Wandering Jew.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2024.
• “Teaching Jewish-Christian Relations: A Diachronic Approach,” The Once and Future Classroom: Resources for Teaching Medieval Studies, Fall 2024.  LINK
• “Sarah Perry’s Melmoth and the Implications of Gothic Form,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 64.1 (2022): 1-13.
• “The Wasps’ Nest: Antisemitism, Conspiracy Theory and The Prioress’s Tale,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 111-149.
• "The Shape of the End: Zombies and the End Times,” Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of theSupernatural 7 (2021): 16-43.  LINK
• “The Monstrosity of the Wandering Jew: Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer,” Anglistik: An International Journal of English Studies 30.3 (Fall 2019): 45-56.  LINK
• “Blood and Soil in The Vampire Diaries,” Aeturnum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 5.1 (June 2018): 43-59.
• “You had to have been there”: The Importance of Place in Teaching Jewish History and Literature,” Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the 'Other,’ eds. Tison Pugh and Miriamne Krummel, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2017, 245-262.
• “The Time of the Wandering Jew in the De Brailes Hours and the Chronica Majora,” Philological Quarterly 96.2 (2017): 171-202.
• “The Transnational Wandering Jew and the Medieval English Nation,” Literature Compass 13 (2016): 771–783.
• “The Pardoner and the Jews,” Exemplaria 28.4 (2016): 337-360.  LINK
• “The Wandering Jew as Relic,” English Language Notes 53.2 (2015): 83-96.
• “The Uncanny Human Condition in Being Human,” Race and Vampire Narrative: Darker than the Night, ed. U. Melissa Anyiwo, Sense Publications, 2015: 65-80.
• “Foreward,” Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xv-xviii.
• “Taking Dracula’s Pulse: Historicizing the Vampire,” The Vampire Goes to College: Essays on Teaching with the Undead, ed. Lisa Nevarez, McFarland, 2013: 32-44.
• “The Vampire as Dark and Glorious Necessity in George Sylvester Viereck’s House of the Vampire and Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Vampir,” Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires from the Enlightenment to the Present Day, eds. Samantha George and Bill Hughes, Manchester University Press, 2013: 79-95.
• “Left Behind, the Holocaust, and that Old Time Antisemitism,” The Journal of Popular Culture 45 (2012): 497-515.
• “Mormon Female Gothic: Blood, Birth and the Twilight Saga,” The Journal of Dracula Studies 13 (2011).  LINK
• "A Latter Day Eve: Reading Twilight though Paradise Lost," The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23:3 (2011): 330-341.
• “Why is the Knight Different from all other Knights?”: Anti-Semitism and the Old French Grail Romances,” JEGP (April 2007): 225-242.
• “Race, Periodicity, and the (Neo-) Middle Ages,” Modern Language Quarterly 65.3 (September 2004): 391-421.
• “The Once and Future Jew: Little Robert of Bury, Historical Memory and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” Jewish History 15.3 (2001): 235-255.
• “‘O My Daughter’: the schöne Jüdin and the neuer Jude in Hermann Sinsheimer’s Maria Nunnez,” The German Quarterly 71.3 (Summer 1998): 254-270.

Shorter Creative Work

• "Albatros," 96th of October: Tales of the Extraordinary, Autumn 2024.  LINK
• "The Visitation of Uri Tsevi," San Diego Decameron Project, 2021.

Public Humanities Work

• "Heine, Converts, the Wandering Jew," AJS Perspectives, "The Conversion Issue," forthcoming December 2024.
• “The Vanished Stumbling Stones of Villingen,” Tablet, June 3, 2015. LINK
• “Le Grand Rôle,” AJS Perspectives, Spring 2015.
• “Perspectives on Open Access,” Faculty File, Geisel Library, Fall 2012.

• Ph.D. in English Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 1996
• B.A. in English Literature, Honors in Major, summa cum laude, UCLA, 1989