Melissa Ridley Elmes

Professor, English

McCluer Hall 118
(636) 627-2506
melmes@lindenwood.edu

Biographical Information

Dr. Melissa Ridley Elmes (B.A., French, The College of William and Mary; ; M.A., English, Longwood University; MFA, Creative Writing, Lindenwood University; Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina Greensboro) is an interdisciplinary literary historian of the medieval period, with particular emphasis on the 10-15th-century Northern European and British Isles literatures and cultures, including Old/Middle English, Welsh, Irish, Anglo-Norman, and Old Norse/Icelandic. She is an award-winning instructor as well as a high-profile scholar, with recent articles in Arthuriana, Year’s Work in Medievalism, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, Modern Philology and Medieval Feminist Forum, an edited collection of essays on the fairy Melusine (Brill, 2017) a volume of essays on Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales (Routledge, 2021) and an edited collection on Ethics in the Arthurian Legend (D.S. Brewer, 2023). Dr. Elmes is also a writer of poetry and fiction, and the author of two books of poetry: Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems (Dark Myth Publications, 2020) and Dreamscapes and Dark Corners (Alien Buddha Press 2023); her creative work has garnered nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star awards for speculative poetry. She serves on the advisory boards of several scholarly presses and organizations including Medieval Institute Publications’ Monsters, Prodigies, and Demons series, the International Arthurian Society North American Branch, and the Southeastern Medieval Association.

Academic & Research Interests

• Literatures and cultures of the Medieval British Isles and Scandinavia
• Medievalism in popular culture
• Women’s and gender studies
• The Arthurian legend
• Robin Hood/ outlawry
• Intersections of gender, violence, and the law
• Monsters and monstrosity
• Alchemy, magic, and esoterica
• Mythology and folklore
• Poetry and poetics
• Fantasy and science fiction
• Critical/creative hybrid writing
• Pedagogy

Courses Taught

Dr. Elmes has taught the following courses:

• Senior Capstone in English Studies
• English Studies Internship
• History of the English Language
• Medieval Afterlives: Modern Receptions of the Medieval
• Medieval Afterlives—Medieval Women
• Early Modern Literature
• Medieval Literature: “Violence and Trauma, Beowulf to Malory”
• Medieval Literature: poetry and poetics
• Chaucer
• Mythology and Folklore
• The Arthurian Legend
• Viking Literature
• Celtic Literature (taught face-to-face and online)
• British Literature: Fact, Fiction and Everything In-Between
• The Medieval World
• World Literature to 1500: Faith, War, Traveling, Memory and Commemoration
• Writing for Game Design
• Research and Argumentation/ Composition II
• Global Introduction to Gender Studies
• Applied Interdisciplinary Studies Tutorial/ Internship
• Freshman Seminar: The Global Arthurian Legend
  Publications
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Publications

Select Publications

• Edited Collections
  • 2023 Ethics in the Arthurian Legend. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer.
  • 2021 Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Kristin Bovaird- Abbo. New York: Routledge Press. Reviewed in: Robin Hood Scholars: IARHS on the Web
  • 2017 Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. Eds. Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes. Leiden: Brill. Reviewed in: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Preternature, Mediaevistik, Medieval Feminist Forum.
• Poetry collections
  • 2023 Dreamscapes and Dark Corners. Alien Buddha Press.
  • 2020 Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems. Apple Valley: Dark Myth Publications.
• Peer-reviewed journal articles
  • 2025 “Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and Medieval Studies: Our Institutions, Our Selves; Our Past, and Our Future.” With Nicole Lopez Jantzen. Speculum 100/1 (January 2025): 79-118.
  • 2023 “Women Reading and Women Writing and Men Writing Women Who Read and Write: (Re-) Considering Women's Literate Practices and the Ethics of Women's Literacy in Malory's Morte Darthur.” Arthuriana 33.2: 84–103.
  • 2023 “When the Digital Generation Isn’t: Pivoting Online with Traditional Campus Students.” Year’s Work in Medievalism 35.36 (2020/21): 11–26.
• Refereed book chapters
  • 2024 “Teaching Beowulf as a Cultural Reliquary,” in Practical Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, eds. Larry Swain and Ophelia Erynn Hostetter. De Gruyter, 207-219.
  • 2023 “Arthurian Ethics Before the Pentecostal Oath: In Search of Ethical Origins in the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen.” Ethics in the Arthurian Legend. Eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 8–34.
  • 2022 “Female Friendship in Late-Medieval English Literature: Cultural Translation in Chaucer, Gower, and Malory.” Women’s Friendship in Medieval Literature. Eds. Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala. Ohio State University Press, 135–54.
• Introductions
  • 2020 “Introduction to Special Issue: MEARCSTAPA: Ten Years of Teratology.” With Asa Simon Mittman and Thea Tomaini. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 9.1: 1–10.
  • 2019 “Editor’s Note: New Feminist Voices in the Heroic Age.” With Carla María Thomas. The Heroic Age 19.
• Anthologized Poems
  • 2024 “Dream Visions.” 2024 Rhysling Anthology, 68–70.
  • 2024 “Adventures in the Dark of the Mind.” Best of Penumbric, vol. vii.
  • 2023 “Never Was a Princess Girl.” Dwarf Stars 2023 Anthology, 18.
• Poetry Editing
  • 2024 “Outlaws” issue of Eye to the Telescope. October. https://eyetothetelescope.com/
• Poetry
  • 2024 “Intergalactic Renthead.” Star*Line 47.1: 15.
  • 2023 “Musings from the Wet Season.” Belmont Story Review 8: 87.
  • 2022 “Dragons and Drams.” Liquid Imagination, June. https://liquidimagination.silverpen.org/article/dragons-and-drams-by-melissa-ridley-elmes/
• Anthologized Stories
  • 2024 “A Mnemosurgeon’s Tale.” Hexagon Year Four Anthology, 167-176.
  • 2022 “The Haunted and The Possessed.” Unwelcomed: Stories of Hauntings and Possessions, ed. Stephanie J. Bardy (Zombie Works Publications), 45-54.
  • 2020 “Dr. Watson and the Werewolf.” Full Moon and Howlin’: A Werewolf Anthology, ed. Stephanie J. Bardy (Zombieworks Press), 101–142.
• Fiction
  • 2024 “Thread of Indignity.” DarkWinter Literary Magazine. June 15.
  • 2024 “Come Hell or Highwater.” Oxford Magazine 52. https://tinyurl.com/mnf2arz3
  • 2024 “A Mnemosurgeon’s Tale.” Hexagon 16 (March), 5–14.
  • 2023 “A Sunbathing Frog My Heart’s Gravestone.” Black Fork Review 9. https://tinyurl.com/mu2d9vy6
• Creative Nonfiction and Craft Essays
  • 2023 “Dark and Twisty with a Side of Optimism.” Miracle Monocle 20. https://louisville.edu/miraclemonocle/issue-20/melissa-ridley-elmes
  • 2022 “Yard Sale.” Sheepshead Review 45.1: 113–114. https://tinyurl.com/mryw9wjx
  • 2022 “May 22, 2012.” Past Ten. https://tinyurl.com/hju8m5tm
  • 2021 “The Art (and Heart) of Arthurian Things: A Craft Essay.” The Year’s Work in Medievalism 34 (2019; published 2021): 77–89.