Sarah Carruthers

I am a second-year PhD student in the Department of English, interested in medieval literature. My research explores bodies, reading, and books in "The Book of Margery Kempe," considering the visionary texts that influenced Kempe, the connection between book and body, the performance of affective piety, and women’s devotional books, especially Books of Hours and Psalters. I am also interested in the broader genre of devotional and visionary literature, particularly texts for and by anchoresses, such as "Ancrene Wisse" and Julian of Norwich’s "Revelation of Divine Love." I am the facilitator for the Middle English Working Group (see the GEA website for more details). I am also a member of The Other Sister, a research group focused on non-cloistered religious women.

Presentations:

• The Divine and the Terrifying: The Permeability of Heaven, Hell, and the Female Body in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias. Canadian Society of Medievalists Conference, Montreal. June 14, 2024.
• Remedies for Elfish Impairment: Magic and Disability in the Old English Leechbook. 2023 International Medieval Congress, Searching for Health and the Holy, Leeds, UK. July 6, 2023.
• The Inner and Outer Rule as Impairment in the Ancrene Wisse. 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Reclusion and Disability, Online. May 13, 2023.
• Thenchen o Godes flesch”: A Disability Studies Analysis of Flesh and Space as Impairment in the Ancrene Wisse. Dalhousie University English Department Graduate Conference, Destinations and Departures, Online. August 13, 2022.
• Re-evaluating Voices and Visions: Can disability studies help us understand Margery Kempe’s mysticism? Canadian Society of Medievalists Conference, Mardis médiévaux/Medieval Tuesdays, Online. May 31, 2022.
• A fals strumpet, a fals Loller, and a fals deceyver of the pepyl’: The Book of Margery Kempe and the Double Bind. Dalhousie English Department Honours Colloquium, Online. November 26, 2020.

Awards:

• Ontario Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto, 2024-2025.
• Viola Whitney Pratt Memorial OSOTF Scholarship in English, University of Toronto, 2023-2024.
• Ontario Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto, 2023-2024.
• SSHRC CGS-M, Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s, 2021-2022.
• Archibald MacMechan Scholarship, Dalhousie University to be held at the University of Toronto, 2021-2022.