Dr. Jodi Grimes - DBU's 2023 Piper Outstanding Professor

The DBU Faculty Council recently voted for Dr. Jodi Grimes to receive the 2023 Piper Outstanding Professor Award. Dr. Grimes serves as the English department chair and as a co-sponsor for Alpha Eta Xi, DBU's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, and the International English Honor Society.

Dr. Grimes teaches undergraduate courses on composition and rhetoric, World Literature I, British Literature surveys, Viking Saga and Romance, Nature Poetry, and Prodigal Son Narratives. She also is active in DBU's creative writing group and supervises DBU's DOXA Literary and Arts Magazine editorial internship. Dr. Grimes is also very active inside and outside of the classroom as a devoted mentor to students.

An accomplished medievalist, Dr. Grimes has presented papers at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (UK), the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), the New Chaucer Society (Portland), and annual conferences for the Texas Medieval Association, South Central Modern Language Associations, and the Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature. She also has published scholarly articles in JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology, The Chaucer Review, and Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society. Her research primarily focuses on how medieval representations of the natural world reflect and shape medieval theology, politics, and culture.

"The study of language and literature is significant," says Dr. Grimes. "God speaks the world into existence in Genesis 1, and John 1:14 tells us that God incarnate, Jesus, is the Word. As an orator and storyteller, through His sermons and parables, Jesus Himself was involved in linguistic and literary creation."

Dr. Grimes holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. She and her husband, Phillip, have two sons, Andrew and Wesley (a current student at DBU).