Paul Strohm was, most recently, a J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford before he joined the Columbia faculty in fall 2003. His principal area of interest is medieval literature with a recent emphasis on transitions from 'medieval' to 'early modern.' His teaching and research have concerned the 'affiliated text,' with special attention to textuality and history and to genre and social change. His publications include: Social Chaucer; Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts; England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and Textual Legitimation, 1399-1422; Theory and the Premodern Text; Politique; and Languages of Statecraft Between Chaucer and Shakespeare. He was previously departmental Chair and President of the Faculty Council at Indiana University, and has held various national offices and posts with the AAUP. In 2001-3, he was Chair of the English Faculty at the University of Oxford.