Princeton University

SARA S. POOR ("Sally") received her PhD from Duke University's Graduate Program in Literature in 1994. After holding positions at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (1995-96) and Stanford University (1996-2002), she joined the faculty at Princeton in September of 2002. While at Stanford, she was awarded a Mellon Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania Humanities Forum, where she taught and did research from 1999-2000. And she currently holds the Charles G. Osgood University Preceptorship (2005-2008) from Princeton University. Her primary research interests are in the areas of Gender Studies and medieval German literature, interests which are reflected prominently in her teaching. Her first book,  Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority was awarded the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship's 2006 Prize for the best first book on a medieval feminist topic. It takes a historical approach to the complex theoretical issues surrounding the study of medieval manuscripts, women's writing, and canon formation and was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2004. She is also at work on a second book project on women and medieval books, tentatively entitled Reading Compilations: The Contexts, Contents, and Owners of Fifteenth-Century German Devotional Books , as well as a series of articles on gender configurations in medieval German courtship narratives. Professor Poor has also recently completed two editing projects: a collection of essays, edited in collaboration with Jana K. Schulman (Western Michigan University) called Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity (2007 Palgrave Press) and two issues of Medieval Feminist Forum (No. 38 and 39, Winter 2004 and Summer 2005). As part of efforts to foster the continued study of medieval German literature and culture in the United States, she has co-founded an association of American medievalists (YMAGINA) that is active in bringing young medievalists together at conferences, as well as in establishing more lasting and productive connections between medievalists and modernists in our field.

book: Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
Winner of 2006 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Prize for the best first book in medieval feminist studies.
Winner of 2008 Medieval Academy of America John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book on a medieval subject.

book project (in progress): Reading Compilations: The Contexts, Contents, and Owners of Medieval German Books (working title)

edited book: Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity (with Jana K. Schulman, Western Michigan University) (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007)

edited journal: Medieval Feminist Forum, Issues 38 and 39 (Winter 2004, Summer 2005)

articles:

(in progress):
 “The Countess, the Abbess, and Their Books: Patterns of Transmission in a Fifteenth-Century German Family”

“Reading Audience in a Latin-German Compilation Manuscript: The Sermones nulli parcentes and the Buch der Rügen,”

“Courtship, the Duchess, and the Female Man in Wolfram’s Parzival”

“The Things They Do for Love: Cross-Dressing and Courtship in Wolfdietrich”

“From Film to Chronicle: Teaching King Arthur Backwards Through Time”

(published):

“Transmission,” Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Beckman (forthcoming).

“Christine Ebner,” “Margaret Ebner,” “Mechthild of Magdeburg,” “Mechthild of Hackeborn,” and “Gertrude the Great,” in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert E. Bjork (forthcoming).

 “Mechthild of Magdeburg” and “Elsbeth Stagel”  Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus (New York and London: Routledge, 2006) pp. 552-53 and p. 782 respectively.  

“Early Mystical Writings” in Camden House History of German Literature, vol 2: The High Middle Ages, ed. Will Hasty (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), 185-200.

 “St. Katharine, St. Alexius und ‘der scholer van parijß’: Aesthetische Form und Gender als Ordnungsprinzipien im Codex 824 der University of Pennsylvania,” in Ordnung und Unordnung in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters, ed. Wolfgang Harms,  C. Stephen Jaeger, and Horst Wenzel (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 2003), 193-205.

“Mechthild von Magdeburg, Gender, and the ‘Unlearned Tongue,’” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31.2 (2001): 213-50; reprinted in The Vulgar Tongue, ed. Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 57-80.

“Gender Studies and Medieval Women in German” College Literature 28 (2001) 118-29.

“Marriage” and “Women,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Germany, ed. John Jeep. New York: Garland Press, 2001. 501-502, 830-32.

“Cloaking the Body in Text: The Question of Female Authorship in the Writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg” Exemplaria 12.2 (2000): 417-453 .

“Historicizing Canonicity: Tradition and the Invisible Talent of Mechthild von Magdeburg” Women in German Yearbook 15  (2000): 49-72.

“Gender und Autorität in der Konstruktion einer schriftlichen Tradition” in Autorität der/in Sprache, Literatur, Neuen Medien. Vorträge des Bonner Germanistentags 1997 (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 1999), Vol.2, 532-552.

“Mittelalterbilder im Film,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbands 45 (1998): 68-82.

“How do you do? Or How to be a Feminist Medievalist on the Job Market Today,”Medieval Feminist Newsletter  18 (Fall 1994): 6-9.

reviews:

Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (2006) by James A. Schultz, Encomia 28 (2006): 72-74 (published April 2008).

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (2004) by Anne Winston-Allen, Journal of Religion 86 (October 2006): 680-81.

Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc (2003) by Maud Burnett McInerney, Medieval Feminist Forum 39 (Summer 2005): 60-62.

God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2003) by Barbara Newman, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73.2 (2005): 563-66.

The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg (2000) by Elizabeth A. Andersen, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 123.1 (2004): 149-53.

The Presentation of Authorship in Medieval German Narrative Literature 1220-1290 (2001) by Sebastian Coxon, Speculum 78 (2003): 864-66.

My Secret is Mine: Studies on Religion and Eros in the German Middle Ages (2001) by  Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, Society for Medieval German Studies Newsletter (Summer 2001)

Medieval German Literature: A Companion (1997) by Marion Gibbs and Sidney Johnson. Speculum 74 (July 1999): 752-754.

The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild von Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart (1995) by Amy Hollywood. Medieval Feminist Newsletter  23 (Spring 1997), 59-62.

translations:
Karsten Witte, “‘Light Sorrow’: Siegfried Kracauer as Literary Critic,”New German Critique  54 (Fall 1991): 77-94.

(with Miriam Hansen), “Kluge on Opera, Film and Feelings,”New German Critique  49 (Winter 1990): 79-138.

Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt, “Happiness and the Work of Relationality,” (excerpt from Geschichte und Eigensinn), Polygraph 2/3  (Spring 1989): 186-192.


LECTURES and CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“Women Teaching Men in the Medieval Devotional Imagination,” (invited lecture) Harvard University, December 6, 2007.

“Siegfried, the Stirrup, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment,” German Studies Association, San Diego, CA, October 6, 2007.

“Discourses of Empire: Commentary,” German Studies Association, San Diego, CA, October 7, 2007.

“Caught Between Worlds: Situating Women in and Re-defining Traditional Epic,” (invited lecture), Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, January 25, 2007.

“The Literary Legacies of Medieval Religious Reform,” MLA, Philadelphia, PA, December 27, 2006.

“Sollte das lustig sein? Die Häutung des Juden in Salman und Morolf,” Blutige Worte: Internationales und interdiziplinäres Symposium zum Verhältnis von Sprache und Gewalt in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Berlin, September 1-3, 2006.

“Telling Tales of Clever Women: Meister Eckhart’s Daughter and Her Offspring,” International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI, May 5, 2006.

“Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book” Presentation of my book at “New Books Roundtable” Sponsored by the Society for Medieval German Studies, International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI, May 6, 2005.

“The Countess, the Abbess, and Their Books: Patterns of Transmission in a Fifteenth-Century German Family” (invited lecture), Deleware Valley Medieval Association meeting, Princeton Theological Seminary, December 11, 2004; (expanded version) February 8, 2006.

“Mothers and Daughters, Fathers and Sons:  Patterns of Book Exchange in a Fifteenth-Century German Family,”  (invited lecture), History of Material Texts Workshop Series, University of Pennsylvania, October 4, 2004. Same paper, with slight modifications, delivered at UC Davis, October 27, 2004.

“Women Readers and the Production of Late Medieval Devotional Anthologies,” (invited lecture) Fordham University Spring 2004 Lecture Series, February 20, 2004.

“All in the Family: Networks of Manuscript Exchange in Fifteenth-century Germany,” MLA, San Diego, Dec. 28, 2003.

“From Film to Chronicle: Teaching King Arthur Backwards Through Time,” AATG annual meeting, Phildelphia, Nov. 21, 2003.

“In der Haut des anderen: Morolfs Kreuzzug und die Bedeutung der Tarnung,” Munich-Urbana-Berlin Tagung für den mediävistischen Nachwuchs”,  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Nov. 2, 2003.

“Expanding the Audience: Working in Tandem on a Latin-German Satire” (with Claire Waters),  38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 10, 2003.

“Transmission Lessons:  Mechthild von Magdeburg and the Making of Textual Authority” , (invited lecture), Cornell University, March 7, 2003.

"Aestheticizing Dissent: Mechthild of Magdeburg and the Art of Devotion" (invited lecture) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champain, February 24, 2003.

“Dialogue, Authorship, and the Mystical Handbook” (invited lecture) Princeton University, January January 22, 2002, also given at Duke University, November 14, 2002.

“Courtship, the Duchess and the Female Man in Wolfram’s Parzival” MLA, New Orleans, Dec. 27-30, 2001, also given at Illinois Medieval Association, Champain, IL, February 22-24, 2002.

Response, “Devout Listeners: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Audience,” International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo MI, May, 2001.

“Gender Muddle in Medieval German Courtship Narratives,”  (invited lecture) German-American Conference on Medieval and Early Modern German Literature, Cornell University, September 29-October 1, 2000

“St. Katharine, St. Alexius und ‘der scholer van parijß’: aesthetische Form als Ordnungsprinzip im Cod. Ger. 4 der University of Pennsylvania” (invited lecture) Munich-Seattle Seminar in Medieval German Studies, Ruhpolding, June 20-23, 2000.

“The German Mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg and the Making of Female Authorship,” (invited lecture) Chesnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA, April 5, 2000.

“Aestheticizing Dissent: Mechthild von Magdeburg and the Art of Devotion,” keynote lecture, Sixth Annual Intersections Conference (Exchanges between German and Religious Studies), University of Pennsylvania, March 4-5, 2000.

"Devil’s Food Forever? Dissing the Priesthood in Medieval Germany" Modern Languages Association Convention, Dec. 27-30, 1999.

"Compilation as 'Translation': Mechthild von Magdeburg and Her Late Medieval Editors," International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 12, 1999.

“Mechthild von Magdeburg, Gender and the “Unlearned Tongue,” University of Western Ontario conference on “Vernacularity: The Politics of Language and Style,” March 4-7, 1999

“The Importance of Being Interested: Teaching a Topic in the Second Year,” ACTFL/AATG Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, November 19-22, 1998

“Pop-Culture in Germany or American Culture in German: Teaching Contemporary TV and Film,” ACTFL/AATG Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, November 19-22, 1998

“Invisible Monuments? Medieval Women Mystics and the Canon,” German Studies Association Annual Convention, Salt Lake City, UT, Oct. 8-11, 1998

“Mit einem prophetischem Geist begabet: Tradition and the Invisible Talent of Mechthild von Magdeburg,” 33rd Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 1998.

“‘Gender’ und Autorität in der Konstruktion einer schriftlichen Tradition,” Deutscher Germanistentag, Universität Bonn, September 23, 1997.

“The Signifying Body in the Writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg,” Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, Kansas City, MO, April 12, 1996.

“Gender and the Construction of Textual Traditions,” (invited lecture) Stanford University, January 26, 1996.

“The Paradox of Female Authority and Authorship in the writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg” (invited lecture) UNC Chapel Hill, January 22, 1996.

“Author Becomes Authority: Mechthild von Magdeburg in her Textual Context,” MLA, Chicago, IL,  December 29, 1995.

“Female Authority in Masculine Terms: Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Conflicted Texts” (invited lecture) Yale University, February 3, 1994.

“Representations of Female Sexuality and the Feminine in Wolfram’s Parzival” (invited lecture) Indiana University, March 29, 1994.

“The Things They Do for Love: Cross-Dressing and Courtship in Wolfdietrich,”
28th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7, 1993.

“Female Authority in Masculine Terms: Mechthild von Magdeburg's Version of Courtly Love,” MLA, New York, NY, December 28, 1992.

“Impersonating Authority: Courtly Love as a Subjective Strategy in the Writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg,” CEMERS 26th Annual Conference: The Roles of Women in the Middle Ages - A Reassessment, Binghamton, NY, October 16, 1992.

“Text from Another Planet? The mystical writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg,” Columbia Medieval Guild Conference, New York, NY, October 12, 1991.

“The Master Slave Dialectic in Ken Russell's Women in Love,” Popular Culture Association of the South 1988 Conference, Knoxville, TN,  October 7, 1988.