Sara Ameri Mahabadi

My research explores the function of plagues in medieval literature. I am particularly interested in the flourishing of devotional and mystical writing in late medieval England and how it responded to and represented the crisis of the Black Death. In my doctoral project, I examine the theological, epistemological, and legal questions that the plague posed to medieval English mystics. I am also fascinated by how plagues and pandemics transcend the geographical boundaries of the premodern world and bring us face to face with the Global Middle Ages. I am currently a Research Assistant for two multi-institutional, and interdisciplinary projects at the University of Toronto Mississauga: Hidden Stories and The Global Past Research Initiative.

List of Publications

• "Undecidable Borders: The Readerly Construction of Julian of Norwich's Motherhood" in Motherhood in the Medieval World, Brepols, Forthcoming.
• "Politics and the Plague in Medieval Persia: A Non-Western Perspective of Pandemic History," The Marginalia Review of Books, 2024.
• "The Plague and the Hope,” Reed This!, Records of Early English Drama, 2022.
• “Intolerable Mystics: The Cases of al-Hallāj and Marguerite Porete,” Reading Muslims, Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Toronto, 2021.
• “A Plague Saint in Print,” Oswald of Northumbria, The British Academy, Peterborough Cathedral & UCL, 2021.