James Rushing’s primary research interests are in medieval literature and culture, above all in the relationship of literary materials to their adaptations in the medieval visual arts, and in the depictions of love, sex, and gender in medieval literature. This research has produced a variety of publications and has also been the subject of a variety of courses at Rutgers Camden, both at the undergraduate level and in the Master of Liberal Studies program.

Professor Rushing’s work on visual narrative has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rutgers Research Council. His teaching interests also include all levels of the German language and all periods of German literature. Dr. Rushing earned his PhD in German at Princeton University.

Recent Publications

  • Ava’s New Testament Narratives: “When the Old Law Passed Away”: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions 2. Published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) by Medieval Institute Publications / Western Michigan University, 2003. 
  • “Images at the Interface: Orality, Literacy and the Pictorialization of the Roland Material,” in Images and Objects, edited by Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel.  New York: Palgrave Press, 2005.
  • “Images at the Interface: Aeneas in the Visual Arts.” In Kulturen des Manuskriptzeitalters  (TRAST 1 = Transatlantic Studies), ed. H.-J. Schiewer/A. Groos). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. 299-320.
  • “Erec’s Uxoriousness.” In  Discourse of Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval Early and Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen. University of Arizona Press, 2005. 163-180
  • Chapter “Iconographic Reception” in Companion to Hartmann von Aue, edited by Francis G. Gentry. Camden House, 2004.
  • “The Pictorial Evidence,” in The Arthur of the Germans, ed. Silvia Ranawake and Harry Jackson, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000, 257-279.
  • “Adventure in the Service of Love: Yvain on a Fourteenth-Century Ivory Panel.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 61 (1998): 55-65.  
  • Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 
  • “The Death of Arofel and the Trial of Willehalm.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1995: 469-482.