Research Interests for Sarah Beckwith

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.

Current projects:

Shakespeare's Late Tragedies

The Book of Second Chances

Book on Theatre and Ordinary Language Philosophy

Areas of Interest:

Medieval Literature & Culture
Early modern British Literature and Culture
Theatre History
Religious Studies
Ordinary Language Philosophy

Representative Publications

1. Beckwith, S, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in York’s Play of Corpus Christi (2001), University of Chicago Press
2. Beckwith, S, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (1996), Routledge
3. Beckwith, S, Sacrifice: Medieval and Early Modern, edited by Aers, D; Beckwith, S, JMEMS, vol. 31 no. 3 (Fall, 2001)
4. Beckwith, S, The Cultural Work of Medieval Theatre: Ritual Practice in England 1350-1600, edited by Beckwith, S, JMEMS, vol. 29 no. 1 (Winter, 1999)
5. S Beckwith, Catholicism and Catholicity: Eucharistic Communities in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by G. Jones and J. Buckley, Directions in Modern Theology, vol. 15 no. 2 (March, 1999), Blackwell [abs]
6. Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet and the Forms of Oblivion, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Jan. 2003) (8000 words.) [abs]
7. Beckwith, S, Absent Presences: Resurrection Theatre in York, in Festschrift for Derek Pearsall, edited by Aers, D; Woodbridge, B; Brewer, (2000)