Sarah Beckwith, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies and Professor, Duke University

PhD, King's College, London University
Medieval Literature

Sarah Beckwith works on late medieval religious writing. She is particularly interested in middle English religious writing in its fully cultural dimensions and in the intersections of writing and religious practice. She has published on Margery Kempe, the literature of anchoritism, medieval theatre and sacramental culture, in numerous essay collections and journals such as the South Atlantic Quarterly and Exemplaria. Her book, Christ's Body: Identity, Religion and Society in Medieval English Writing was published by Routledge in 1993. Her book, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in York's Play of Corpus Christi was published by the University of Chicago Press in the summer of 2001. Her next book, How to Do Words with Things, is a book of essays which explores the implications of Wittgensteinianism and ordinary language philosophy in medieval drama and culture. She is also beginning research on a book spanning the middle ages and Renaissance on childhood and revenge. She is co-editor of JMEMS.