Christopher Baswell

Christopher Baswell is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English at Barnard College and Columbia University, and currently serves as Acting Director of Film Studies. Previously, he held positions as Professor of English and Associate Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA (2001–2008). His academic journey includes a Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. from Yale University, a Fulbright Scholarship at New College Oxford and the Warburg Institute, and a B.A. from Oberlin College.

Baswell’s research focuses on medieval literature, manuscript studies, and the classical tradition’s influence on medieval cultures. He explores narratives of empire, multilingualism in medieval France and England, and emerging work on disability studies in the Middle Ages. His 1995 book Virgil in Medieval England won the Beatrice White Prize. He co-edited the medieval volume of the Longman Anthology of British Literature and edits the Cursor Mundi series on medieval and early modern studies.

Key awards include NEH, ACLS, and National Humanities Center fellowships. His publications span foundational medieval narratives, gendered foundations, and cultural intersections between French and English medieval texts. Recent work interrogates disability’s role in medieval cultural imagination.