MARGARET ESCHER

Margaret Escher received her B.A. from St. John's College (Annapolis) and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. Her research interests include the strategies of tricksters and criminals, ambiguities of agency and gender, and the representation of space and time in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern literature, focusing on Italy, France, England and the Classical World. During her many years at John Jay she has taught literature from every period and has recently added "The Literature of Crime and Punishment" and "Tricksters in World Literature." In addition, she taught a course, "Conscience and Risk," that she designed for the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (them Thematic Studies). This course reflects her ongoing interest in the intersection of ethics and technological complexity. She is currently writing a book whose working title is Agency and Inconsistency in Medieval and Early Modern Trickster Narratives, based in part on her 2007 dissertation "Configurations of Trickery in Boccaccio's Decameron, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, Masuccio's Il Novellino and Shakespeare's Othello.”  She looks forward to participating in the coming months in the Congress of the Canadian Renaissance Society in Vancouver, B.C. and in Crime Cultures: Figuring Criminality in Literature, Media and Film at the University of Portsmouth (U.K.). Professor Escher has published as both Peggy Escher and Margaret Escher.