sTephen spector
Professor
Ph.D. Yale, 1973
Religions and culture, medieval English literature, and the English language
Humanities 1104
Stephen.Spector@stonybrook.edu
I prefer to be contacted by email.
- Biography
Biography
B.A. in English and B.A. in psychology from Penn State University in 1968.
M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale in 1973.
In addition to teaching at Stony Brook since 1972, I have taught at Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1996-97).
- Courses Taught
Undergraduate: The History of the English Language, Chaucer, Medieval Literature, The Bible as Literature and in the World, Survey of English Literature, Part 1
Graduate: Chaucer, The Bible - Books and Editions
Essays in Paper Analysis, Editor. Washington, London, Toronto: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987.
The Genesis of the N-town Cycle. New York and London: Garland Press, 1988.
The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, co-editor. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.
The N-Town Play, Editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Early English Text Society Supplementary Series, volumes 11 (Introduction and Text) and 12 (Commentary).
Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
May I Quote You on That: A Guide to Grammar and Usage. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
The Quotable Guide to Punctuation. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Articles
"Symmetry in Watermark Sequences,” Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978), 162-78.
“The Composition and Development of an Eclectic Manuscript: Cotton Vespasian D. Viii,” Leeds Studies in English (1977): 62-83.
“The Provenance of the N-town Codex,” The Library, 6th Series, 1 (1979): 25-33.
“Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays,” Comparative Drama 13 (1979): 3-16.
“Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays” (a summary of my work, with suggestions for further study), The Shakespeare Newsletter 29 (1979): 14.
“Paper Evidence and the Genesis of the Macro Plays,” Mediaevalia 5 (1979): 217-32.
“Symmetries in Watermarks within Gatherings” (a summary of my work on manuscript collation), Manuscripta, 1979.
“New Light on Southerne’s The Disappointment, 1684,” The Library, 6th series, 2 (1980): 465-66.
“Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays,” reprinted in The Drama of the Middle Ages , eds. Clifford Davidson, C.J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (New York, 1982), pp. 328-41. Reprinted 1983, 1985.
“The Oberammergau Passion Play,” Theologische Realenzyklopaedia, 1990.
“Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” in The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, Stephen Spector, co-editor (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991).
“Time, Space, and Identity in the Play of the Sacrament,” in The Stage as Mirror, ed. Alan Knight (Bury St. Edmunds: Boydel & Brewer, 1997).
“Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2005.
“Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” reprinted on the Jewish Agency for Israel website (Israel), February 2005 (www.jafi.org.il/papers/2005/feb).
“Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” reprinted on the Spazio forum website (Italy), March 2005 (www.spazioforum.net/forum/index).
“The Pontiff’s Bridges,” Statesman, April 7, 2005.
“An American Heroine and the Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews: The Untold Story behind a Crisis,” Midstream, July-August 2005.
“Unfinished Rescue of the Falas Mura,” The Jerusalem Report, January 9, 2006.
“Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” in Lee Patterson, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: A Casebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 183-209.
“Faith Tints Palin’s Political Palette,” Newsday, September 16, 2008.
“Faith Tints Palin’s Politics,” Chicago Tribune.com, September 16, 2008.
“Faith Tints Palin’s Politics,” Baltimore Sun.com, September 16, 2008.
“Faith Tints Palin’s Politics,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com, September 16, 2008.
“Five Questions for Sarah Palin,” Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2008.
“Feeding Crocodiles,” Oxford University Press Blog, April 8, 2009.
“What Every Jew Needs to Know about Evangelicals,” Jewish Week, May 6, 2009.
“Evangelical Support for Israel: Promise, Prophecy, Gratitude, Love and Remorse,” Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, May 2009.
“What Every Jew Needs to Know about Evangelicals,” Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, May 22, 2009.
“I Will Bless Those Who Bless You,” Midstream, Summer 2009, 13-17.
“The Evangelical Perspective,” New York Times, Room for Debate, July 8, 2010.
“Shamir’s Greatest Legacy?” Tablet, July 3, 2012.
“God and Magog in the White House: Did Biblical Prophecy Inspire the Invasion of Iraq?” Journal of Church and State, 56 (Summer, 2014), 534-52.
“The Meaning of Terrorism,” Oxford University Press Blog, Nov. 18, 2015.
Reprinted on philosophynews.com.
Tweeted by Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) to 270,000 followers.
“On Our Love-Hate Relationship with Punctuation,” Literary Hub, December 5, 2017.
“Me? Whee!” Oxford Words Blog (Oxford University Press), February 20, 2018.
“All the President’s Tweets,” OUP Blog (Oxford University Press), March 10, 2018.
“Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” reprinted in The Canterbury Tales, eds. V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, 3rd Norton Critical Edition (New York and London: Norton, 2018), 629-48.
“This Year in Jerusalem: Prophecy, Politics, and Trump’s Middle East Policy,” Journal of Church and State (Oxford University Press), https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/csz001, April 12, 2019.
“Abraham and Isaac: Human Frailty and Trauma in Genesis,” Jewish Bible Quarterly, 50. 2, October 2022.
- Honors and Awards
London Book Festival Prize for Best General Non-Fiction Book of 2008: Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for “outstanding historical writing based on archival material, as well as the continuous creation of high caliber academic works.” Presented for Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews, December 2005
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, 2002-3
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, 2001 (declined
Visiting Scholar, Hebrew University, 1996-97
National Endowment for the Humanities Grant: Director of Summer Seminar for College Teachers: “Absence and Presence: The Jew in Early English Literature,” 1996
National Endowment for the Humanities Grant: Director of Summer Seminar for College Teachers: “Absence and Presence: The Jew in Early English Literature,” 1993
National Humanities Center: Research Fellow, 1985-86
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1985-86
National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (Research Materials), 1981-82
Wesleyan University, Center for Humanities, Senior Research Fellow, 1981
The Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, 1980, for the best first article on a medieval topic. Awarded by the Medieval Academy of America for research undertaken while editing the N-town Play for the EETS.
Research Development Fund Incentive Grant, 1980
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Summer 1977
American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1975-76
Stony Brook Faculty Grant, 1975-7
SUNY Research Foundation Fellowship, 1979
SUNY Research Foundation Fellowship, 1978
SUNY Research Foundation Fellowship, 1977
SUNY Research Foundation Fellowship, 1975
SUNY Research Foundation Fellowship, 1974
Research Foundation Grant-in-Aid 1979-80
Research Foundation Grant-in-Aid 1978-79
Research Foundation Grant-in-Aid 1975-76
Research Foundation Grant-in-Aid 1974-75
NDEA Title IV Fellowship (Yale), Yale University Fellowship, 1968-72
Phi Beta Kappa, 1967