Jana Mathews, PhD
Professor of Medieval Literature and Culture
Dr. Mathews' primary research and teaching focus on the literature and culture of medieval and early modern England, with concentrations in legal studies, material culture, and the history of the British monarchy. She has authored over 15 essays and articles on these topics and speaks frequently to the media about their significance to contemporary society.
Her secondary scholarly interests include career and life planning and collegiate sororities and fraternities. Her design and teaching of career readiness and life skills courses at Rollins have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, News Nation, and Fox News's America's Newsroom. She is also the author of The Benefit of Friends: Inside the Complicated World of Today's Sororities and Fraternities (UNC Press, 2022), which was a category bestseller on Amazon and was named a 2023 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice for excellence in scholarship, originality, and importance to the field. Her research on fraternity and sorority life appears in Slate and has been profiled in various media outlets including the Chronicle of Higher Education, Buzzfeed News, Town & Country, and Inside Edition.
Having previously served as President of the College of Liberal Arts Faculty and English Department chair, Dr. Mathews currently directs the Pre-Law Program at Rollins.
Education
BA, Brigham Young University
MA, University of Colorado
PhD, Duke University
Courses Taught
Global Middle Ages
Thanks to the incredible generosity of an alum donor who wants to provide opportunities for all students—regardless of financial, physical or life circumstances—to have the kind of transformational international travel experience that he did as an undergraduate at Rollins, Dr. Mathews has the privilege of taking small groups of students on highly subsidized short-term field studies to different destinations around the globe including Scotland & Ireland, Peru, Italy, Denmark & Sweden, Spain, Mexico, and Egypt. These week-long trips are embedded within a semester-long course, where students conduct in-depth studies of that country's premodern history, literature and culture.
Material Culture
This course takes a close look at the relationship between people and objects over time and space, focusing particularly on the way that material culture works to shape and define conceptions of individual, communal and national identity. Topics include the secret histories of everyday objects; the psychology of collecting, hoarding and compulsive decluttering; the politics of display and dilemmas of classification; the economics of ritualistic consumption and thoughtless disposal; and the anatomy of mementos and souvenirs and inevitable “death of things.” In-class sessions are complemented with trips to museums, thrift stores, flea markets, consignment and pawn shops, cemeteries, and the landfill.
Only in Florida
In this seminar, first-year students conduct critical examinations of alligator wrestling matches and python hunts; drug runners and dumb criminals; Snowbirds and Spring Breaker escapades to gain a deeper understanding of why our state is the nation's magnet for the weird, bizarre and downright crazy. Because the deepest form of learning is experiential, this course frequently hits the road in form of weekend excursions to Amelia Island, Tampa's historic Ybor District, the Everglades, and everywhere in between.
Legal Writing
Inspired by first-year law school curricula, this course's assignments are designed to develop and hone close reading and predictive and persuasive writing skills; critically evaluate legal information and authorities; and introduce students to process of conducting effective legal research. In the process, students will learn how to brief a case, draft a client letter and legal memo; construct an oral argument; conduct research using public record and legal databases; and produce an ethically sourced longform investigative journal article of a current legal case.
News & Features
December 18, 2018
Stronger Together
At Rollins, our diverse group of community engagement courses delivers on the College’s commitment to service, synthesizing classroom learning with real-world experiences in our own backyard.
February 01, 2018
Cool Class: Job Market Boot Camp
Graduating seniors don their best business attire and get intensive training on how to excel in the global workforce.
December 14, 2017
Blogs & Brews
A rare opportunity for first-year students to work with a real-world client delivers big gains on both sides.
Why You'll Want Dr. Mathews As Your Professor
Dr. Mathews says she "won the professional lottery" when she was invited to join the English department at Rollins College. As an associate professor who specializes in medieval and early modern British literature, her courses range from Dirty Old Men (think Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton), Hoarders (premodern material culture) and Globetrotters, which examines travel writing produced in the Age of Exploration and Discovery.
Teaching comes first at Rollins and Dr. Mathews is known for being fiercely committed to her students. She was the 2019 recipient of the Hugh F. McKean Award (given by the graduating senior class to one professor for excellence in teaching) and the 2018-2019 recipient of the prestigious Cornell Distinguished Teaching Award at Rollins. She was also the former recipient of the Arthur Vining Davis Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Professing Excellence Award and the Cornell Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Service and Scholarship.
When not in the classroom, you can find Dr. Mathews in the bowels of the library, researching and writing on a broad range of medieval and early modern topics. Her academic articles and essays appear or are forthcoming in the Journal for the Study of British Culture, Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts, and in edited collections published by Cornell University Press, Bloomsbury Academic, Routledge, Bedford-St. Martin's and Brill. In addition to these scholarly projects, she also has had opportunity to connect the medieval past to the present by talking about the history of kingship and the British royal family in the local and national media.
Rollins' close proximity to Orlando's attractions has enabled Dr. Mathews to pursue a new avenue of scholarly study: namely, the rich, nuanced and sometimes weird ways in which medieval objects, people and events are displayed, reanimated and creatively reimagined in contemporary pop culture. Some of my pop culture medievalism courses include Dungeons & Dragons (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Cinderella's castle, Medieval Times Dinner theater, etc.) and a class that examines the medieval source texts that inspired Game of Thrones. In 2013, I had the opportunity to partner with one of my students and alum Mark Miller to write the script for a 90-minute theatrical dinner show that was performed for over 100,000 people at Orlando's Arabian Nights Dinner Theatre. My work on medieval bible collections displayed in religious themes parks and interactive museums is featured in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture and referenced in the Wall Street Journal.