Office Hours

Fall 2009
Tu Th 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Ridgley 326

Current Courses

Faculty

SARAH WESTPHAL-WIHL

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Phone 314.935.8701, Fax 314.935.7255

Sarah Westphal-Wihl joined the faculty of Washington University in the fall of 2009,and teaches in the IPH Program as well as in the Department of German.

She has a long-standing interest in the history of gender and the feminist analysis of medieval literature. Her new book, Ladies, Harlots and Pious Women: A Sourcebook in Courtly, Religious, and Urban Cultures of Late Medieval Germany, is forthcoming in 2010 from Medieval Institute Publications. Co-written with Prof. Ann Marie Rasmussen of Duke University, it shows how women were included in the historical record and how gender was hotly debated, particularly in urban settings. Source texts are offered in the original language and in English translation.

Her current research involves the legal implications of the medieval concept of Minne (love), which involve conflict resolution through reconciliation. She is interested in how this legal tradition from the European past might relate to contemporary movements for peace at the community and national levels.

She is also working on early modern repots of the life of Kunigunde, Duchess of Bavaria (1465-1520) and what they signify for the history of female biography.

The study of manuscript media informs her research. She is the author of Textual Poetics of German Manuscripts 1300-1500, a study of how the production of hand-written books reveals aspects of medieval reading and interpretive practice. From 1985 to 1990 she served as an associate editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is co-editor of two Signs readers, Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages and Feminist Theory in Practice and Process.

Offices Ridgley Hall 326	Mailing Address Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Campus Box 1104 Washington University St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
Mailbox Ridgley Hall 319

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