Sarah Watson
Sarah Watson
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Woodside 202
swatson [at] haverford.edu
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Education

B.A., University of Rochester

M.A., Fordham University

M.A. and Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Biography

Originally from Rochester, NY, I completed a B.A. in English and History at the University of Rochester. I attended Fordham University, earning an M.A. in Medieval Studies, and then went on to complete a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania. At Haverford, I teach courses on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Women Writers as well as a Freshman Writing Seminar entitled "Crossing Borders." Looking at literature across a wide range of time periods and geographies, my courses explore, among other things, how gender, race, and class shape the creation, reception and categorization of literary texts.

Research

My research investigates the intersection of gender, book history, and transnational literary culture. I have published essays on Christine de Pizan, late-medieval women book owners, and primary source pedagogy. My current book project, Reading Across the Channel: Christine de Pizan's Transnational Women Readers, examines the transnational circulation of works by Christine de Pizan, focusing on how women readers and book owners shaped the reception of Christine's texts.

Programs & Exhibitions

In 2020, I piloted a new career exploration program, "Careers in English," designed to connect current Haverford students with alumni. See this article on the Haverblog for more details.

In 2019, I worked with my first-year writing seminar to create a student exhibition in Haverford's newly renovated library entitled "Crossing Borders: From Slavery to Abolition, 1670-1865." With the help of Sarah Horowitz and other colleagues in the library, the students created a full-scale exhibition which told a complex and sensitive story about the history of slavery and abolition through items in Haverford's Special Collections. An online version of the exhibition can be found here.

Related Publication: "Crossing Borders: A Collaborative Student Exhibition at the Haverford College Library." Co-author Sarah Horowitz. In Bibliography Among the Disciplines - Pedagogy with Textual Objects. (forthcoming)

Digital Projects

I am currently working on a number of digital projects:

Women Book Owners in Late-Medieval Francophone Europe: 1350-1500 (booksofduchesses.com) - a digital humanities project which aims to collect, organize, and present data related to medieval laywomen and their books. The project promises to advance interdisciplinary research by creating a tool that facilitates the investigation of transregional social and literary communities. I am currently preparing this project in collaboration with Dr. S.C. Kaplan and the Haverford Digital Scholarship Team.

Related Publication: "Books of Duchesses: Women Book Owners in Late-Medieval Francophone Europe, 1350-1500." Co-author, S.C. Kaplan. The Journal of the Early Book Society, vol. 23 (2020), 27-59.

Haver Tales & Bryn Marvels: Bi-Co Adaptations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales - an ongoing digital project created in collaboration with the students of my ENG 201 Chaucer class and with the support of the Haverford Digital Scholarship Team. The project aims to collect and share student adaptations of The Canterbury Tales.