Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Recruitment
Hannah R. Johnson received her PhD in English from Princeton University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK), following a BA in English and Medieval Studies at Emory University. She joined the University of Pittsburgh faculty in 2006 and was promoted to full professor in 2021.
Johnson’s scholarship examines medieval antisemitic legends and the rhetoric of exclusion in premodern Europe. Her broader research interests include intellectual and disciplinary history, the psychology of conspiracism, Islamophobia, comparative religious studies, and Jewish Studies. With the support of an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship, she co-authored The Critics and the Prioress: Antisemitism, Criticism, and Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale (Michigan, 2017) with Heather Blurton, an interdisciplinary study of the critical impasse surrounding Chaucer’s most inflammatory tale. Her first monograph, Blood Libel: The Ritual Murder Accusation at the Limit of Jewish History (Michigan, 2012), explores the ethical frameworks that have shaped scholarly engagement with the ritual murder accusation, a medieval myth alleging that Jews murdered Christian children. More recently, Johnson was awarded a 2023 Fulbright Fellowship to collaborate with New Zealand scholar Simone Marshall on the early research for an academic trade book, The Dawn of Magical Thinking: Why Premodern Ideas of Witch-Hunting, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia Continue to Harm Our World.
An advocate of interdisciplinary and public humanities work, Johnson has held leadership roles in her department, including Director of the Literature Program, Acting Director of Graduate Studies, Multimodal Pedagogy Coordinator, and Faculty Grant Support Advisor. She is affiliated with Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Jewish Studies, the University Center for International Studies, and the Collaboratory Against Hate. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Otago and UC Santa Barbara.