Stephen G. Nichols, James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University, also served as Director of the School of Criticism and Theory, based at Cornell, from 1995-2000. A specialist in medieval literature, art, and history, he received the Modern Language Association's James Russell Lowell Prize for an outstanding book by an MLA author in 1984 for Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography. In 1991, The New Philology, conceived and edited by Nichols for the Medieval Academy of America, was honored by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. In 1992, the University of Geneva conferred on him the title of Docteur ès Lettres, honoris causa, while the French Minister of Culture made him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, an Honorary Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory, and has written or edited nineteen books. He has been visiting professor at a number of universities in North America, Europe, England, and Israel, and has held the following major fellowships: Guggenheim, N.E.H., ACLS (junior and senior), and APS.

An Announcement from the Kreiger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University:

Stephen Nichols, James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities, has been elected the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award. The award is conferred on eminent foreign researchers at the peak of their academic careers by Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in recognition of lifetime achievement, and awardees are invited to carry out research projects of their choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany. Nichols will be hosted by the Free University in Berlin and based at the new Dahlem Humanities Center, with which Johns Hopkins serves as an international partner institution, and by the University of Cologne. He will use the time to finish his book Seeing Voices: On Reading Troubadour Poetry.

In 2008, colleagues and friends and students from around the world gathered in Baltimore to participate in a colloquium in Nichols’s honor entitled “Philosophy, History, Theory: Rethinking the New Medievalism”. Click here to see the list of speakers.

Nichols has also contributed to various reports for the Council of Library and Information Resources, including:

To read these reports, go to Selected Articles