Professor Johnson specializes in late medieval English prose and poetry, medieval poetics and philosophy, law and literature in the Middle Ages, early autobiography, and vernacular theology. Her first book, Practicing Literary Theory in the Late Middle Ages: The Ethics of Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, was published by University of Chicago Press. She is currently working on a book about the aesthetics of contemplation in late Middle English mysticism and drama. Her recent essay publications include an article on time and affect in The Cloud of Unknowing (the Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2011), "The Poetics of Waste" (PMLA, 2012), an essay on trespass and contract law in Troilus and Criseyde in the New Chaucer Handbook (Oxford UP, 2013), and a new edition and facing-page translation of the 14th-century poem Wynnere and Wastoure (Broadview Press, 2012). Two collections of her poetry, The Dwell (Scrambler Books) and Her Many Feathered Bones (Achiote Press) were published in 2009 and 2010.