 Associate Professor of EnglishOffice: McKenna 2 and 3 Telephone: 303-492-6059 E-mail: mbell@colorado.edu |
Research and teaching interests
Folklore; oral traditions; the blues; Anglo-Saxon; Old Norse; history of the English language
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1973
A.B., Harvard College, 1959
Publications
Books
With Catherine M. Orr and Michael J. Preston, Urban Folklore from Colorado: Photocopy Cartoons. University Microfilms, 1976
Know Your Iceland. U.S.I.S., l960
Essays
"Foreword." Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood through Dreams, Imagery and Hypnosis, by Nicholas E. Brink. Baywood, 2001, iii-xv
"College Goes to the Blues." Blues Access 1, 2 (1990): 24-25
"The Real Runes and What They Say." Journey 1, 1 (1989): 24-25
With Philip Roughton, "The Old Norse 'Saga' of the Apostle Bartholomew: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary." Ascent 1, 2 (1988): 15-26
"Songs from the Western Soil." Walnut Valley Occasional 21, 1 (Sept. 1987): 26
"A Pninian Incident and an Item of Harvard Folklore." Journal of Modern Literature 13,2 (1986): 321-25
"Fiddles and Violins: A Cowboy Concerto." Muse 34 (Feb. 1985): 6
L. Michael Bell, "The Lexical Roots of Narrative Structure." Jenseits von Index und Konkordanz: Beiträge zur Auswertung maschinenlesbarer altnordischer Texte. Ed. Hans Fix. Frankfurt, 1984, 43-79
With Elizabeth Robertson, "The sá inn Pattern: A Literary Idiom in Old Norse and Old English." In Hans Fix, ed., Jenseits von Index und Konkordanz: Beiträge zur Auswertung maschinenlesbarer altnordischer Texte. Ed. Hans Fix. Frankfurt, 1984, 81-117
'Hel our Queen': An Old Norse Analogue to an Old English Female Hell." Harvard Theological Review, 76 (1983): 263-68
"The Names of the Sagas: Prolegomenon and Proposal." Skandinavistik 13, 1 (1983): 44-51
"Typographical Resources and Problems in Old English, Part I." Old English Newsletter 16, 2 (1983): 13-17
"Telluride & Henderson: A Tale of Two Festivals." Muse 26 (Oct-Nov 1983): 3, 9
"The Fiddle, the Rifle, the Ox, the Bible: Horse Sense." Muse 27 (Dec. 1983): 5
"Hot Rize." Muse 9 (Jan-Feb 1981): 6-7
"Fighting Words in Egils saga: Lexical Pattern as Standard-Bearer" (48 pp.). Arkiv för nordisk Filologi 95 (l980): 89-112
"Bluegrass." Muse 8 (Nov-Dec 1980): 7, 11
"Marie Rhines: Discovering American Fiddle Tunes." Pickin' , Vol.6, No. 10 (November 1979): 16-18, 32
"Festival Feelings." Pickin', April 1978, pp. 18-20
"Bob Dylan's Back Pages." Colorado Daily, November 3, 1978, pp. 22-23
"Muddy Waters Is Not a Town in Arkansas." Colorado Daily, February 25, 1977, pp. 20-22, 24
"John Sebastian: .Amazing Moonshot Rockets and Wheels That Sing." Colorado Daily, May 7, 1977, pp. 8, 27, 28
"Jesse Winchester: God's Own Juke Box." Colorado Daily, June 24, 1977, pp. 12, 16, 17, 22
"The Honest Art of Jim & Jesse." Rocky Mountain Musical Express, June l977, pp. 25-26
"The Small Gift of Jerry Jeff Walker." Rocky Mountain Musical Express, August 1977, p. 11
"Randy Newman: Musical Humor in a Jugular Vein," Colorado Daily, November 11, 1977, pp. 30, 38
"Cokelore." Western Folklore 35 (1976): 59-65. Rpt.. in Readings in American Folklore. Ed. Jan H. Brunvand. Norton, 1979, 99-105
"Oral Allusion in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar: A Computer-Aided Approach." Arkiv för nordisk Filologi 91 (1976): 18-32
"Speaking of History." Mountain-Plains Museum Newsletter, October 1976, pp. 14-15
"Johnny Long: A Naturalized Citizen of the Blues." Colorado Daily, September 15, 1976, pp. 7-8
"A Computer Concordance to Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Studies for Einar Haugen. Mouton, 1972, 58-68
"Folk Raga: Sandy Bull and [David] Buskin." Boston After Dark, June 27, 1972, Section Two, p. 7
"[Joseph] Spence, [Mance] Lipscomb: Teaching the Blues." Boston Phoenix, November 21, 1972, Section Two, p. 11
"Sonny [Terry] and Brownie [McGhee] Don't Give a Hoot." Boston Phoenix, November 28, 1972, Section Two, p. 13
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," "John Marston," "Metaphysical Poets," "Othello, The Moor of Venice," "Poet Laureate," "Matthew Prior," "Alexander Selkirk," "John Skelton," "Sir William Temple," Encyclopedia International, revised edition. Grolier, 1968. Rpt. in Collier's Encyclopedia
With Anne Stearns, "In Search of Vinland." Idler 17 (February 1966): 30-39
Selected honors and awards
William Austin Clark Grant, 1999
Residence Halls Teaching Award, CU Boulder, 1997
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, 1992
National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant, 1977-78
Selected current projects
Carlore (book on automotive folklore)
Anthology of the Blues (book)
A Title-Index to Old Norse Sagas
The Portable Viking (anthology of Old Norse [Old Icelandic] sagas in English)
"The Folklore of Suppressed Inventions" (article)
With G. Reneau, "The Death of Paul McCartney: A Folk Legend of the Sixties" (article)
"An Icelandic Folk Scholar's Reading of Hávamál, strophe 2" (article)