David Wallace

David Wallace is the Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences, where he has been a faculty member since 1996. His distinguished career includes visiting appointments at institutions including London, Melbourne, Princeton, and Jerusalem. Wallace serves as Director-in-Chief of the online journal Bibliotheca Dantesca and is a core member of Penn's Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program and Faculty Environmental Humanities Working Group.

Wallace's research spans medieval literature, European literary history, and global humanities, with particular expertise in Chaucer, Dante, and premodern women's writing. His work has significantly reshaped understanding of the Global Middle Ages, challenging traditional nation-state paradigms of literary history. His current major project, National Epics, examines how literature contributes to constructing national borders on a global scale through collaboration with 110 scholars worldwide. His two-volume Europe: A Literary History 1348-1418 (Oxford University Press, 2016) represents a groundbreaking geographical approach to medieval European literature.

Wallace's scholarly output reveals consistent engagement with themes of transnational literary exchange, women's writing across centuries, and the performance aspects of medieval poetry. His recent work has expanded from European literary traditions to examine global manifestations of nationalism through literary expression. He emphasizes oral performance in understanding Chaucer, providing numerous recordings through PennSound that demonstrate Middle English poetry in performance.

• Sir Israel Gollancz Prize from the British Academy
• Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (2024)
• David Delaura Teaching Award (2016)
• Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching (2007)
• Alan Filreis Teaching Award (1998)

As an advisor, Wallace has chaired 23 doctoral dissertations since 1996, mentoring scholars working on diverse topics from medieval romance to contemporary literary theory. His collaborative approach extends to the National Epics project, which actively involves students in Penn's majority-minority classrooms as expert informants on specific cultural contexts. Wallace has also led international initiatives including summer schools in Fribourg, Lausanne, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Budapest, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Medieval Literature.