As Professor of English and Medieval Studies, and an affiliate in the department of Religion, my scholarly work assesses the reach and limits of the imagination, both during the Middle Ages and in the ways we have come to think about the medieval period as a whole. My persistent focus has been on the relation of the imagination to literary, philosophical, and historical trends. This explicitly interdisciplinary approach results, in part, from my somewhat unusual interdisciplinary training (I have degrees in History, Theology, and English). But it also stems from a concern with scholarly method, and an according interest in the limitations of most accounts of historical periodization.