Charles MacQuarrie, PHD

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. MacQuarrie earned his Ph.D. in medieval languages and literature from the University of Washington. He took his B.A. degree in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, his M.Litt. in Celtic Languages and literatures from the University of Edinburgh, and his M.A in English at Humboldt State, University. He also holds an A.A. In English from Antelope Valley College. Dr. MacQuarrie is the former editor of the Celtic Studies newsletter and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. During 1996-97 he was Washington Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and visiting scholar in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. In 2002 he was a Fulbright fellow to the American Academy of Rome. He directed four NEH overseas seminars for university professors and teachers on early Medieval Languages and Literatures which was variously centered on the Isle of Man, at the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Edinburgh. Thes seminars traveled to visit various archeological sites on Man, in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England.

His book, The Waves of Manannan: The Biography of the Irish God of the Sea from The Voyage of Bran to Finnegans Wake, was published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2004. He also has a chapter on the Isle of Man in Medieval literature in the New History of the Isle of Man: Volume 3, published by Liverpool University Press, and The Medieval Culture of the Irish Sea and the North Sea: Mannanan and his Neighbors published by Amsterdam University Press in 2019.

Prof. MacQuarrie teaches Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Video Games as Literature, and other courses at California State University, Bakersfield. He is currently researching and writing about medieval themes in video games and Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene and a proto-video game.