Peter Dendle is a professor of English at

Penn State Mont Alto Penn State Mont Alto is a residential commonwealth campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Located in Mont Alto, Pennsylvania, the campus offers nine four-year and seven two-year degree programs, including nursing, forest technology, occup ...

, teaching classes on

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging fr ...

, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and society). Dendle has written books and articles on a number of topics, including

cryptozoology Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness ...

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

, the demonic in literature, zombie movies, and Medieval plants and medicine. His work on zombies was featured by NPR.

Career

His education includes a B.A. in English and Philosophy (1990) and an M.A. in Philosophy (1993), both from the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state' ...

, as well as an M.A. in English from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

(1991) and a PhD in English from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

(1998). In 2007, National Geographic featured some of the research results from Dendle's monograph ''Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England''. Other recent works include peer-reviewed articles on cryptozoology, medieval charms, demon possession, gender in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature, and a translation and analysis of The Old English ''Life of Malchus'' and Two Vernacular Tales from the ''Vitas Patrum'' in MS Cotton Otho C.i: which appeared in ''English Studies'', 2010."The Old English “Life of Malchus” and Two Vernacular Tales from the Vitas Patrum in MS Cotton Otho C.i: A Translation" , ''English Studies''
/ref> He is the co-editor of three collections of academic essays on various aspects of the preternatural: ''Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden'' (Boydell, 2008), ''The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous'' (Ashgate, 2012), and ''The Devil in Society in Premodern Europe'' (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012) with Richard Raiswell (University of Prince Edward Island). Dendle's ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia'' (McFarland, 2001) was the first exhaustive overview of the subject, evaluating over 200 movies from 16 countries over a 65-year period starting from the early 1930s. The follow-up volume, ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, Volume 2: 2000–2010'' (McFarland), was published in 2012.

Selected publications

Monographs

* * * *

Edited Collections

* Richard Raiswell with Peter Dendle * Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, * Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide (eds.).

References

External links

Peter Dendle at Penn State Mont Alto

"Night of the Living Dendle," Allthingszombie.com interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dendle, Peter Living people American folklorists American medievalists Critics of cryptozoology 21st-century American non-fiction writers University of Kentucky alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty University of Toronto alumni Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Year of birth missing (living people)