Professor of English; Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages; Director, Rude Mechanicals Medieval and Renaissance Players;
Co-coordinator, Minor in Gender and Women’s Studies
Office: Knutti 210
Phone: 304-876-5208
E-Mail: bellzey@shepherd.edu
Area of Specialization
Medieval Literature
Dr. Betty Ellzey joined the Shepherd College English faculty in 1989 after having completed a Ph.D. at The Catholic University of America and having worked a year as an assistant editor for The Middle English Dictionary at the University of Michigan. Her areas of specialization are Old and Middle English language and literature and medieval and Renaissance drama. Dr. Ellzey has published articles and presented papers on Chaucer, Beowulf, the Old English poem Genesis A, women in medieval romance, and medieval drama. Her other interests include ballet and modern dance. Dr. Ellzey is also the co-coordinator of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program and the Director of The Rude Mechanicals Medieval and Renaissance Players. As Director of the Rude Mechanicals, she has directed numerous Shakespeare plays including King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, Othello, and Macbeth; a wide variety of medieval plays, including The Creation and Fall of the Angels, The Fall of Man, The Killing of Abel, The Death of Herod, The Second Shepherds’ Play, Everyman, Mankind, and five plays by the tenth-century German canoness Hrothsvita; and Greek tragedies such as Antigone, Medea, Trojan Women, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Electra.