Department of English

Sarah McNamer is an Associate Professor of English and Medieval Studies. Her current research concerns the relationship between late medieval vernacular literature and the history of emotion. Recent publications include an essay on “Feeling,” in Oxford Twentieth-Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English; "The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi," Speculum 84 (2009): 905-55; and Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion, forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press (2009). Courses she teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels include Chaucer, Medieval European Literature, Medieval Performance, and Medieval Emotion.

McNamer’s honors and awards include a Rhodes Scholarship, a Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and research fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

McNamer has received degrees from Harvard University (B.A.), Oxford University (M.Phil.), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.d.).