Professor of English

Office: Boyer House 211
Telephone (office): (509) 527-4964
Telephone (home): (509) 529-5013
Messages: (509) 527-5248
Fax: (509) 527-5039
E-mail: fosteree@whitman.edu

Professor Edward E. Foster received his A.B. from St. Peter's College and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in English. He has been Professor of English at Grinnell College, St. Mary's College of Maryland (also Chair of Arts and Letters), the University of San Diego (also Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), and Whitman College (also Dean of the Faculty, 1979-1988, and Acting President, 1988-1989). He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Nottingham (England) in 1986 and Honorary Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) in 1989-90. He received an honorary doctorate (D.H.L.) from Albertson College of Idaho in 1994.His teaching areas include Medieval and Renaissance English Literature, the History of the English Language, and Detective Fiction from the late Nineteenth Century to the Present. He has taught special topics classes on Courtly Love, Romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Detectives, and Literary Evaluation. He shares the teaching of Medieval and Sixteenth Century Literature, the History of the English Language, and Chaucer.
His research interests are Medieval narrative, Chaucer, and textual criticism. He has published on Medieval Romance, Chaucer, Alexander Pope, and college governance. He has published six books, the most recent of which is Three Purgatory Poems: The Gast of Gy, Sir Owein, and William of Tundale (Medieval Institute Press). He is currently working on “the idea of the common good” in Medieval literature.