Dr. Gentry came to Penn State from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991 as head of the Department of German, a position he held until 1997 when he stepped down to be able to devote more time to his research and teaching interests. His research agenda encompasses broad areas of Medieval culture and Medieval German literature as well as also the reception of the Middle Ages in the modern period. He is the author and editor of more than 15 books and a few dozen articles, most recently the Companion to Middle High German Studies (Brill) and The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia (Routledge), of which he is co-editor. He has been a faculty member at SUNY-Albany and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was also department chair. In 1984 he served as a Lehrstuhlvertreter (Lehrstuhl Schupp) at the Universität Freiburg. He is past president of the Medieval Association of the Midwest. He served on the editorial board of the German Quarterly (1991-1994), was for many years the German Editor for Studies in Medievalism, and the book review editor for Monatshefte. He has lectured extensively both here and abroad on medieval and modern topics and was a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (1978/79, 1984) for research in Munich and Freiburg. Most recently he received the Ritterkommandeur des Hochedelen Ordens der Drei Löwen for outstanding services to German and Medieval Studies (2018) and the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande from the Federal Republic of Germany (2008).