Jim Knowles

Bio

Jim Knowles is Associate Teaching Professor and Director of the Literature Program in the NC State Department of English. He works on late medieval and early modern English literature, architectural history, and historical theology, with a particular interest in the fourteenth-century allegorical poem known as Piers Plowman. He is Managing Editor for the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive and Executive Secretary of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET).

Dr. Knowles teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in medieval and early modern literature, as well as surveys of British and World literature. He was the recipient of the CHASS Outstanding Lecturer Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2016.

Professor Knowles was co-founder of the Oxford Friars Project (2010-14), a digital humanities project which virtually reconstructed the lost buildings of the Franciscan and Dominican orders in medieval Oxford, setting them in the context of English antifraternal literature. His current research project is on the connections between late medieval literature and vernacular architecture, especially timber-framed barns and aisled halls.

Along with his sister, English Knowles, he is the co-author of Beer Hiking Virginia, North Carolina & DC: The Mountains, Beaches, and Breweries from the Blue Ridge to the Outer Banks (Helvetiq Press, forthcoming February 2025).