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Sarah Beckwith

Katherine Everett Gilbert Distinguished Professor of English
English
Duke Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708-0680
302A Allen, Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Sarah Beckwith works on late medieval religious writing, medieval and early modern drama, and ordinary language philosophy. She is the author of Christ's Body: Identity, Religion and Society in Medieval English Writing (London: Routledge, 1993, pbk 1996); Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in York's Play of Corpus Christi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pbk 2003), and Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011, pbk 2013). She is currently working on a book about Shakespearean tragedy and about philosophy's love affair with the genre of tragedy and The Book of Second Chances, a book about versions of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. She co-edited JMEMS for several years, and co-founded the book series Re-Formations with the University of Notre Dame Press and is the editor of numerous collections of essays and journals.

Office Hours


Spring '25 Semester:

On Leave


Current Appointments & Affiliations


Katherine Everett Gilbert Distinguished Professor of English · 2013 - Present English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Professor of Theater Studies · 2009 - Present Theater Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Professor in the Department of Religion · 2011 - Present Religious Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Professor of English · 2001 - Present English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Bass Fellow · 2008 - Present English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published February 14, 2023
Spring Books from Duke Authors from Wittgenstein to Capoeira
Published May 29, 2013
The Humanities: The Next Generation

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Recent Publications


Absent Presences: The Theatre of Resurrection in York

Chapter · January 1, 2023 The dead come to life in the bodies of the living – not just in resurrection but also in theatre. Corpus Christi theatre fully understands the complexity of this interrelationship in the palpable apparitions of Christ-the-actor to audiences in the Resurrec ... Full text Cite

Enter the Child: A Scene from Stanley Cavell's the Claim of Reason

Journal Article Philosophy and Literature · October 1, 2022 Taking its cue from a resonant passage in Stanley Cavell’s The Claim of Reason, this essay reflects on the necessity of the figure of the child for Cavell’s philosophy and for his understanding of the differences between Austinian and Wittgensteinian crite ... Full text Cite

Imagining the Virtues: Medieval and Early Modern Histories

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · September 1, 2022 Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Forms of Conversion: Religion, Culture, and Cognitive Ecologies in Early Modern Europe and its Worlds

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Mcgill University, Montreal · 2013 - 2019

Paper Dolls

Institutional SupportPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation · 2001 - 2002

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Education, Training & Certifications


King's College London (United Kingdom) · 1992 Ph.D.
University of Oxford (United Kingdom) · 1982 M.A.
University of Oxford (United Kingdom) · 1981 B.A.