Samantha Zacher
Associate Professor
Graduate Faculty Member
- Degrees
- University of Toronto
Ph.D. - University of Toronto
M.A. - Vassar College
B.A.
Bio
Samantha Zacher received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2003. She taught for several years at Vassar College before joining the English Department and Medieval Studies Program at Cornell. Her main areas of research and teaching include Old and Middle English literature, with a special interest in poetry and sermons. She has written on the style and rhetoric of vernacular homilies and their adaptation of Latin and Greek sources, the use of Old English, Latin, and Hebrew puns in Old English poetry, Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards Jews and Jewish practices, and questions of genre in relation to poetry and prose. Her monograph, entitled Preaching the Converted: the Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2009. A volume of essays co-edited by Zacher, New Readings in the Vercelli Book, is scheduled to appear in the fall of 2009 with the University of Toronto Press.
Research and Teaching Interests
- Old and Middle English literature
- Manuscript studies
- Rhetoric
- Patristic and medieval Biblical exegesis
- History of the English language
Current Projects
- The Poverty of Unbelief: the Place of Jewish Practice, Ritual, and Symbols in Anglo-Saxon Texts (monograph)
- Views of Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (edited collection of essays)