Andy Troup, PHD

BIOGRAPHY

Originally from Dallas, Dr. Andy Troup came to Bakersfield to join the CSUB English Department in 1993.  Prior to his appointment here, he taught for a year at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Dr. Troup always wanted to teach, but until college he was not sure which subject.  A voracious reader, he loved literature, but he also enjoyed the structure and logic of language itself.  He saw these two areas converge in a Chaucer class during his sophomore year at UT-Austin.  Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the greatest writers in the canon, but to understand his poetry one had to learn a “foreign” language, Middle English.  Chaucer provided the window through which Dr. Troup would discover the history of the English language.  At that point he knew he wanted to teach medieval languages and literature.

After completing his BA, Dr. Troup went on to earn an MA and PhD at UT-Austin, both in English language and linguistics.  While learning Old English, he became intrigued by the system of relative pronouns used in the language and how it differs from the Modern English system.  This spark of interest in a tiny part of Old English grammar then developed into a dissertation, a book, and a lifelong passion.

More than 30 years after finishing the doctorate, Dr. Troup is still obsessed with Old English.  He has made his own prose translation of Beowulf as well as many other pieces of Anglo-Saxon poetry and prose.  His goal is to translate every text in the Old English corpus that he can get his hands on.  As Dr. Troup plows through the canon, he marks and comments on each relative pronoun and clause.  He hopes one day to assemble a personal database containing every relative clause in the extant literature.

In addition to his linguistic work, Dr. Troup loves teaching literature, especially Chaucer, Medieval English Literature, and British Literature Survey I.  Over the years he has also taught Old English to several highly motivated individuals via independent study.  He served two terms as English Department Chair (2011-2017).