Karen E. Saupe

Education

Professor Saupe earned a B.A. in English from Wittenberg University in 1981. She earned an M.A. in English from Wright State University while teaching high school English in Springfield, Ohio. She returned to school full-time to earn an Ph.D. in medieval English literature from the University of Rochester. She joined the Calvin College faculty in 1994.

Biography

Recent Activity:

Professor Saupe directs the college’s Rhetoric Center and regularly conducts research on writing in collaboration with the student staff. Their most recent presentation, “Cultivating Passion for Writing,” appears in East Central Writing Centers Association Conference Proceedings, Spring 2009.  She serves on the editorial board of TEAMS, the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages. Saupe also hosts Inner Compass, an interview program produced at Calvin and aired on several public television stations across the country.

Favorite Books/Interesting Recent Reads

• Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen
• I Want to Buy a Vowel by John Welter
• Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Hobbies

• Music (especially stringed instruments of all kinds)
• Outdoor activities

Additional Information

• Watch some of Professor Saupe’s Inner Compass interviews
• Professor Saupe regularly helps lead Taizé worship at Calvin's chapel services.

Academic interests

• old and middle English literature and language
• Chaucer (taught every other year in English 337)
• Langland
• Christianity in medieval England
• Renaissance literature
• Shakespeare
• lyric poetry
• writing pedagogy.