Name: Jo Koster
Title: Margaret M. Bryant Professor of English
Education: Ph.D., English (concentrations in Medieval English and English Language and Rhetoric),University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
M.A., English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
B.A., English, University of Pennsylvania
Office: 228 Bancroft Hall
Phone: 803/323-4557
E-mail: kosterj@winthrop.edu
Web: http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj
Area(s): Medieval Language and Literature, British Literature, Social Media, Popular Culture,
Digital Humanities
Dr. Koster's primary areas of scholarship are in women's literacy and literate practices in the later Middle Ages, especially in England, and in applications of social media and digital humanities to pedagogy and English literature. In 2009, she received the Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement from the Southeastern Medieval Association; in 2014 she received the award for Outstanding Teaching from that organization. In 2012 she was awarded Winthrop's Jane LaRoche Graduate Faculty Award and in 2015 was named Winthrop's Distinguished Professor. She was awarded the Margaret M. Bryant Professorship in 2020. She currently is finishing a book on medieval women's literacy, working with issues of material culture in Chaucer and more recently publishing on The Book of Margery Kempe. She currently serves on the Medieval Studies Committee and chairs the Provost’s Ad Hoc Task Force on Personnel Policies, and has held a number of positions in University Governance, including two terms as Chair of Academic Council and three terms as Chair of the Committee on University Curriculum.
Besides a long series of articles, essays, and reviews, she's published a number of poems in small collections. Koster also studies book arts and makes and binds books. All of this serves as a cover for her fanatical interests in Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and NASCAR and as an excuse for making her famous five-chocolate brownies.