Carol L. Robinson teaches Medieval English literature, contemporary media communication, digital age rhetoric, writing
for video games, and film adaptation, theory and history for Kent State University. She has publications that involve analyses of the Arthurian legend, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, Monty Python, French filmmaker Georges Méliès, Deaf playwright Willy Conley, Deaf Poet and Storyteller Peter Cook, and various types of medievalisms in film, theatre, television, and video games. Recent publications include: “The Magic Mechanic: Georges Méliès’s Cinematic Medievalism” in Silent Medievalisms: Reimagining the Middle Ages During Film’s Foundational Era (Eds. Tison Pugh & Angela Jane Weisl, Ohio State University Press, forthcoming in March, 2026), “The Boys Are Back in Town: Capital One’s Propagandic Commercials for Alt-Right Nostalgic Imperialism” in Medievalisms in a Global Age (Eds. Robert L. Squillace and Angela J. Weisl, Boydell & Brewer, 2024), and “Capital One’s Condemnation, Conversion, and Eventual Celebration of Mythical Medieval Northern European Males through Allegorical Commercials” in Studies in Medievalism XXXIII: (En)gendering Medievalism (Ed. Karl Fugelso, Boydell & Brewer, 2024). In addition to working on future publications, she is also working on two media projects. One project is a documentary video and website project about four theatrical productions performed simultaneously in English and ASL since 2009 at KSU Trumbull Theatre, called The Snowball Effect. The other project is a collaboration to build The UNICORN Castle, an online virtual museum and game of games. She is a mostly retired storyteller, having performed both original and medieval stories for children and adults in Georgia and Wisconsin in the 1980s and 1990s, including for Georgia Public Radio.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she grew up in several places in the Great Lakes region, moving from Wisconsin to Illinois, from Illinois to Ohio, from Ohio back to Illinois, and from Illinois back to Wisconsin. She earned her B.A. in English Composition, with certification to teach K-8th grade, from Beloit College in 1984. She earned her M.A. (medieval studies and film studies), passing her exams “with Distinction” from the University of Georgia in 1988. She earned her Ph.D. in English (medieval studies & literary theory and cinematic history and theory) from the University of Georgia in 1994.
TECHNICAL SKILLS: Photography, cinematography, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photo Shop, Krita, HTML-5, CSS-3, JavaScript, Moodle, WordPress, Distance Education.
HOBBIES: gardening, landscaping, weaving, collecting marbles, collecting bottles, cooking/baking, photography, painting, storytelling, reading about interesting things and people.