Education
Loyola University Chicago (2006-2015)
PhD in English, August 2015
Dissertation: Censorship and Intolerance in Medieval England. I draw on texts from a variety of genres, including philosophy, political theory, theology, romance, political poetry, and drama, to argue first that the roots of formal print censorship in England are to be found in earlier forms of intolerance which sought to enforce conformity, and second that censorship is not distinct from intolerance, but rather is another form of intolerance. Committee: Allen J. Frantzen, director; Thomas Kaminski and Christopher Kendrick, readers.
Comprehensive exam fields: Textual Studies, Censorship, and Tolerance; English Satire: Thomas More through Jonathan Swift; The Essay: Seneca through E.B. White.
MA in English, August 2007
University of New Mexico (2001-2006), summa cum laude
BA in English (pre-graduate concentration); BA in French.
Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Departmental honors in English, Presidential Scholar, University Honors Program, Sigma Tau Delta (English Honorary Society)
Teaching, Research, and Mentoring Positions
Term Teaching Faculty, Honors College, University of New Mexico (UNM), 2015-
Adjunct Faculty, Honors College, UNM, 2010-2014
Research Assistant, Peter Shillingsburg, Humanities Research Infrastructure and Tools, Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Loyola University Chicago (LUC), Spring 2010.
Teaching Assistant, Suzanne Gossett, English 274, Shakespeare for Non-Majors, LUC, Spring 2009.
Teaching Assistant, Thomas Kaminski, Honors 102, The Western Intellectual Tradition (Great Books of Modernity), LUC, Spring 2008.
Participant, Thomas Kaminski, Teaching Effectiveness Seminars, LUC, 2007-2009.
Teaching Assistant, John Jacobs, UCWR 110, Core Writing Seminar, LUC, Spring 2007.
Graduate Tutor, Writing Center, LUC, 2006-2007.
Courses Taught
UHON 301/302, This Class is a Joke: Satire and Society. UNM, Spring 2022, Fall 2022. This upper-division Honors class gives students the opportunity to read highly canonical literary works, including Thomas More’s Utopia, Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire’s Candide, and many others, with an emphasis on how satire reflects the social, political, and philosophical climate of its first readers.
UHON 301/302, What Good is Tolerance? UNM, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021. This interdisciplinary course builds on some of the methodology of my dissertation and uses some of the “great books” spanning 1,500 years to examine the evolving roles of tolerance and intolerance in Western political and social thought, with an emphasis on tolerance as a core and revolutionary feature of the American experiment.
UHON 201, The Articulate Citizen. UNM, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, and Spring 2021. In this core writing course, students draw on important documents and speeches from American history as models for their own writing. Research centers on analysis of primary sources and secondary sources with an emphasis on teasing out implicit biases in writing students encounter, particularly in the news.
UHON 121/122, Legacy of Success. UNM, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, and Fall 2022. This is a literature survey course that introduces students to the discussion-based format of Honors seminars. We read Roman satires, medieval romances, the medieval morality play Mankind (which I translated for my students’ use in this course), Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Samuel Johnson’s eighteenth-century Oriental tale Rasselas, Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, autobiographies by Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass, and two great American novels from 1925, The Great Gatsby and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, among other works.
ENG 290, Human Values in Literature. LUC, Fall 2009. This is a literature course fulfilling a core requirement; my section explored the way different societies have measured success. We read Roman satire, medieval and Renaissance English poetry, plays by Shakespeare and Molière, autobiographies by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Frederick Douglass, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and a Vonnegut short story, among other selections.
UCWR 110, University Core Writing Seminar. LUC, Fall 2007 and Fall 2008. This is Loyola’s required composition course for all first-year and transfer students. I taught it as a sort of civics course, using readings from American history as the basis for all the assignments and for our discussions of rhetorical techniques that the students could deploy in their own writing. The three main components of the class were audience, bias, and what I call “respect for the reader.”
Conference Presentations
“Human and Political Bodies in John of Salisbury’s Justifications for Intolerance in the Policraticus.” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Session 409, Kalamazoo, May 2018.
“Intolerance, Tolerance, and Liberty of Conscience in More’s Utopia.” Joint Conference of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association and Medieval Association of the Pacific, Las Vegas, April 2018.
“Tolerance and Politics: John of Salisbury and the Risks of Speaking Truth to Power.” The Past, Present, and Future of Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The 48th Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association. Albuquerque, June 2016.
“Nothing But a Show Trial: Tolerance and Intolerance in the Lai of Lanval.” Opera Omnia: A Festspiel in Honor of Allen J. Frantzen. Chicago, October 2015. (Invited Presentation)
Publications
Obenauf, Richard. “Mankind, the First English Comedy: A Long-Overlooked Option.” Teaching Comic Texts, edited by Beverly Hogue, MLA Options for Teaching. (forthcoming)
Obenauf, Richard. “William of Ockham.” The Chaucer Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Newhauser, Wiley-Blackwell. (forthcoming)
Obenauf, Richard. “Censorship in Medieval England.” Critical Insights: Censored & Banned Literature, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2019.
Obenauf, Richard. “Medieval Intolerance and Modern Censorship in the Morality Play Mankind.” Critical Insights: Censored & Banned Literature, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2019.
Languages
Fluent in French.
Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association
National Council of Teachers of English
Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
Other Work Experience
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Radio Broadcast Series
Web audio editor of over five hundred different weekly podcast interviews, 2007-2014
Post-Production for nine two-hour programs aired on 161 radio stations, 2007
KUNM-FM Radio
Audio Editor for the twice-daily show Performance New Mexico, 2001-2006
Co-Producer for the twice-daily show Performance New Mexico, 2003-2006
Editor and Co-Producer, An Evening With Nancy Wilson, 2006
Website Calendar Moderator, 2003-2006
Other Relevant Experience
Amateur Radio Operator, Amateur Extra Class License, call sign W5GUZ. This is the highest class issued by the FCC and requires passing several levels of rigorous technical examinations.
Richard Obenauf, PhD 