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 (forthcoming in December 2006 from Palgrave Press) and two issues of Medieval Feminist Forum (No. 38 and 39, Winter 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.
