Sarah Star joins Kenyon after teaching at the University of Toronto, where she received her Ph.D. She is currently completing a book studying the intersections of late medieval English literary and medical texts. She is interested in the physiological language that represents racial identities on the body, differentiates Christians from Jews and Muslims, and asserts the inextricability of physical and spiritual life.
She has also begun work on a second book analyzing the poetics of vernacular authority in Middle English translations of technical treatises. Part of that project is motivated by her work with the Henry Daniel Project, a collaborative effort to make Middle English medical texts by Henry Daniel available for students and researchers. She is associate editor of what will be the first complete edition of Daniel’s uroscopy treatise and is co-editing a critical companion to the edition.
At Kenyon, she teaches courses on Chaucer, Middle English literature, medieval religion and…
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Sarah Star joins Kenyon after teaching at the University of Toronto, where she received her Ph.D. She is currently completing a book studying the intersections of late medieval English literary and medical texts. She is interested in the physiological language that represents racial identities on the body, differentiates Christians from Jews and Muslims, and asserts the inextricability of physical and spiritual life.
She has also begun work on a second book analyzing the poetics of vernacular authority in Middle English translations of technical treatises. Part of that project is motivated by her work with the Henry Daniel Project, a collaborative effort to make Middle English medical texts by Henry Daniel available for students and researchers. She is associate editor of what will be the first complete edition of Daniel’s uroscopy treatise and is co-editing a critical companion to the edition.
At Kenyon, she teaches courses on Chaucer, Middle English literature, medieval religion and race, and literature and medicine.
Areas of Expertise
Chaucer, Middle English literature, medieval religion and race, literature and medicine.
Education
2016 — Doctor of Philosophy from Univ Toronto
2011 — Master of Arts from Univ Toronto
2010 — Bachelor of Arts from Univ Toronto
Courses Recently Taught
ENGL 103
Introduction to Literature and Language
ENGL 103
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered annually in multiple sections.
ENGL 224
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
ENGL 224
Chaucer's final great work (profound, moving, sometimes disturbing, often hilarious) can be considered both a medieval anthology and a framed, self-referential narrative anticipating modern forms and modern questions. Reading in Middle English, and exploring the social and historical contexts of Chaucer's fictions, we will pay special attention to Chaucer's preoccupations with the questions of experience and authority, the literary representation of women, the power of art, and the status of literature itself. This counts toward the pre-1700 requirement. Open only to first-year and sophomore students who have taken ENGL 103 or 104.
ENGL 391
ST:Race&Religion Medieval Lit
ENGL 391
Academic & Scholarly Achievements
2018
"The Textual Worlds of Henry Daniel," forthcoming in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018).
2018
"Henry Daniel, Medieval English Medicine, and Linguistic Innovation: A Lexicographic Study of Huntington MS HM 505," Huntington Library Quarterly 81.1 (2018): 63-106.
2016
"Anima carnis in sanguine est: Blood, Life, and The King of Tars," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 115.4 (2016): 442-62.
2016
"Reading Chaucer's Calkas: Prophecy and Authority in Troilus and Criseyde," The Chaucer Review 51.3 (2016): 382-401. Co-authored with Jeff Espie