Research Interests
Medieval literature, in particular Latin and narrative; education (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic), poetics, and literary criticism and theory in the Middle Ages; folktales and popular culture in medieval sources, especially Latin; Latin-vernacular relations
Jan Ziolkowski (born November 17, 1956; A.B. summa cum laude Princeton University, 1977; Ph.D. University of Cambridge, 1982) has focused his research and teaching on the literature and culture of the Latin Middle Ages. Within medieval literature his special interests have included such areas as the classical tradition, the grammatical and rhetorical tradition in particular (“Literary Theory and Criticism in the Middle Ages”), the appropriation of folktales into Latin, Germanic epic in Latin language, and the postmedieval reception of the Middle Ages.
A faculty member at Harvard since 1981, he received tenure from within in 1987 as Professor of Medieval Latin, and of Comparative Literature (1987–2002). He served as chair or acting chair of the Department of Comparative Literature (three terms of service), Committee on Medieval Studies, and Committee on Folklore and Mythology, in addition to (fleetingly) the Department of the Classics. In the early 1980s he founded and ran for more than a decade on a weekly basis the Medieval Studies Seminar, which continues to hold regular meetings in the Barker Center that are open to the public. From 2007 to 2020, he directed Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard center for the humanities and arts in Washington, D.C., with programs in Byzantine studies, Pre-Columbian studies, and Garden and Landscape studies. That long stretch taught him much about those fields of studies, but perhaps even more about Harvard as an institution.
In his teaching Ziolkowski offers courses now mainly in Classics (Medieval Latin) and in Medieval Studies.
International Ties
Ziolkowski became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2017. He was elected to membership in the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2006, the Academia Europaea in 2015, and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2020.
After serving as Vice President of the International Medieval Latin Committee from 1993–1999, he has been President since 2000. The conferences have had strong participation from the Harvard community. The next will take place in Nuremberg in September 25–28, 2024, on “Epic in the Latin West (4th-15th Centuries).”
www.mittellatein.phil.fau.de/epos-2024