Annie Sutherland

At Somerville, I teach Old English to first-year students and Middle English to the second years.

I also supervise finalists who have chosen to write dissertations on Anglo-Saxon or later medieval topics and authors.

In the English Faculty, I teach a wide variety of medieval literature to undergraduates, though I particularly enjoy lecturing on religious texts and cultures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In conjunction with these lectures, I regularly take students to workshops in the Ashmolean, where we have the opportunity to view, handle and discuss the Museum’s extensive collection of devotional objects. I also play a role in the provision of teaching for second and third-year students who have chosen to specialise in the literature and language of the medieval period (we call this Course 2). At graduate level, I supervise a range of MSt and DPhil students, particularly those who work on religious and biblical literature, and on devotional texts written by and for women. Current and recent DPhil students have worked on the language of suffering in thirteenth-century pastoral texts for women, the practice of prayer in early medieval and contemporary contexts, the manuscripts of devotional texts, and the Wycliffite translation of the Bible.

In my own research, I am interested in English religious literature of the early Middle Ages, particularly that which was intended for the use of female audiences. At the moment I am working on a collection of thirteenth-century prayers which were apparently composed for (and possibly by) a group of women living on the borders between England and Wales. These women seem to have been highly intelligent individuals, very possibly from wealthy backgrounds. Yet they chose to spend their lives in seclusion, voluntarily locked into small cells in which they could focus their attention on God. I am fascinated by what motivated them to live such lives, and by the books that they read in their isolation. My edition of these prayers (known collectively as the ‘Wooing Group’) is to be published by Liverpool University Press. Below is a list of my further publications.