CHRIS VINSONHALER bridges the worlds of scholarship and performance. A translator, storyteller, and medievalist, she brings Beowulf to life as both text and event — recovering the poem’s riddling structure, its irony, and its power to move audiences through voice and embodiment. Her approach draws deeply on the work of her mentor and dissertation director, Professor Jonathan Wilcox, whose scholarship on humor and riddling shaped her reading of the poem’s enigmatic design. Her work fuses historical insight with the immediacy of live performance, revealing Beowulf not as a relic of the past but as a living act of imagination.
- Ph.D., University of Iowa (2013)
- Assistant Professor of English (ret.) | The City University of New York (BMCC)
- Translator & Performer — Beowulf: An Epic Enigma
- Scholarship and Presentations
- Beowulf.Live | Curriculum Vitae
Vinsonhaler’s performance of Beowulf earned a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (2004) and a CUNY Faculty Development Grant (2021). Her teaching earned honors at Florida State University and the University of Iowa, and the Distinguished Teaching Award at BMCC (CUNY).
Her translation, Beowulf: An Epic Enigma, Book I, is available on Amazon. Beowulf: An Epic Enigma Book II will be released in 2027. For more on her scholarship, click here.
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Join us for more on The Enigmatic Beowulf, Saturday, 10 a.m., Sangren Hall 4120!CHRIS VINSONHALER is a scholar in medieval studies (Ph.D., U Iowa) and a professional storyteller who has performed nationally and internationally. Her performance of Beowulf was also awarded a fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004) and a CUNY Faculty Development Grant (2021). Vinsonhaler has also received teaching awards at Florida State University and the University of Iowa, and she was honored to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award during her tenure as an assistant professous for more on The Enigmatic Beowulf, Saturday, 10 a.m., Sangren Hall 4120!CHRIS VINSONHALER is a scholar in medieval studies (Ph.D., U Iowa) and a professional storyteller who has performed nationally and internationally. Her performance of Beowulf was also awarded a fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004) and a CUNY Faculty Development Grant (2021). Vinsonhaler has also received teaching awards at Florida State University and the University of Iowa, and she was honored to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award during her tenure as an assistant professor n us for more on The Enigmatic Beowulf, Saturday, 10 a.m., Sangren Hall 4120!CHRIS VINSONHALER is a scholar in medieval studies (Ph.D., U Iowa) and a professional storyteller who has performed nationally and internationally. Her performance of Beowulf was also awarded a fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004) and a CUNY Faculty Development Grant (2021). Vinsonhaler has also received teaching awards at Florida State University and the University of Iowa, and she was honored to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award during her tenure as an assistant professor at