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Sarah
Westphal-Wihl joined Rice in fall 2003 as an Associate Professor.
She received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Before coming to
Rice, she spent the 12 years teaching at McGill University in
Montreal, Canada. 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.
Her current research is concerned with the representation of
women in medieval fictional trials and how it relates to the
theory of gender in medieval customary law. She has also carried
out collaborative research and publishing on the implications
of stories of violence against girls for contemporary legal
theory. She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Commission,
the German Academic Exchange Service, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the Folger Institute, and the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. During a recent trip
to Germany she recovered forgotten literary works written by
eighteenth-century nuns from a (now defunct) Franciscan convent
in central Munich, one of which — the nuns' self-history
of their community — she is currently translating into
English. These works offer a positive perspective on women’s
literacy and access to learned tradition in the early German
Enlightenment. She recently joined the Humanities 101 team to
offer a foundational course from Homer to Chaucer.
Research
and Teaching Areas
The
Self-History of Eighteenth-Century Nuns — The Romance
of King Arthur in the Middle Ages — Marriage, Love and
Courtship in the Age of Chivalry — Medieval Women and
the Culture of the Book — Feminism in the 1790s, 1890s
and 1990s — Woman Writers, Readers and the Power of Disclosure
— Women's Stories and Legal Change — Feminist Theory
— Feminist Research Methods
Education
Representative
Publications
1.
Books
Textual
Poetics of German Manuscripts, 1300-1500 (Columbia,
SC: Camden House, 1993).
Ed.
with Micheline R. Malson, Jean F. O'Barr, and Mary Wyer, Feminist
Theory in Practice and Process (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1989).
Ed.
with Judith M. Bennett, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jean F. O'Barr,
and B. Ann Vilen, Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
2.
Recent Articles
“Calefurnia’s Rage: Emotions and Gender in Late Medieval German Literature,” in Lisa Perfetti (ed.), The Representation of Women’s Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida).
“Magic
in Die Mörin by Hermann von Sachsenheim (1453),” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik
(June, 2003), 72-87.
“Bad
Girls in the Middle Ages: Gender, Law, and Medieval German
Literature,” Essays in Medieval Studies 19 (2002),
103-19.
(with
Colleen Sheppard) “Narratives, Law and the Relational
Context: Exploring Stories of Violence in Young Women’s
Lives,” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal
15/2 (Fall 2000), 335-66.
“The
Van Hulthem Manuscript and the Compilation of Medieval German
Books,” in R. Jansen-Sieben and H. van Dijk (eds.), Codices Miscellanearum: Brussels Van Hulthem Colloquium
1999 (Brussels: Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique,
1999), 71-89.
“Women's
Magic, Poet's Malice: The Sorcery of Cursing in Late Medieval
German Texts,”Daphnis: Zeitschrift für Mittlere
Deutsche Literatur 27/1 (1998), 1-29.
“Camilla:
The Amazon Body in Medieval German Literature,”Exemplaria:
A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
8/1 (Spring, 1996), 231-58.
“Stories
of Gender: Reply to Rosi Braidotti,” in Christie McDonald
and Gary Wihl (eds.), Transformations in Personhood and
Culture After Theory (College Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1994), 153-63.
(with
Colleen Sheppard) “Equity and the University: Learning
from Women's Experience,”Canadian Journal of Women
and the Law 5 (Spring, 1992), 5-36.
“The
Ladies' Tournament: Marriage, Sex, and Honor in Thirteenth-Century
Germany,”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 14 (Winter, 1989), 371-98. Reprinted in Sisters
and Workers in the Middle Ages, 162-89.
3.
Online Texts (* forthcoming)
Grants,
Awards, Fellowships
Sarofim Teaching Innovation Grant, Rice University (co-recipient, 2004/5) — University
of South Carolina, Research and Productive Scholarship Award (2002) — Folger
Institute, Grant-in-Aid (2001) — Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant (1994-98) —
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Strategic Grant (1994-96) — Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Fellowship (1987-90) — National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (1985) — DAAD Fellowship (1976-77) — Fulbright Scholarship (1972-73)
Positions
and Affiliations
Associate
Professor, Rice University (since 2003) — Faculty Affiliate, Program for the Study of Women and Gender, Rice University — Faculty
Affiliate, Program in Medieval Studies, Rice University
Current
Projects
A
translation of literary works written by eighteenth-century
nuns from a (now defunct) Franciscan convent in central Munich.
The
Arthurian Knight by Eva Martinez-Brito,
student
of GERM 330 (Courtship, Love and Marriage in the Age of Chivalry)
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