DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Biography

Professor Newman (Ph.D. Yale) is known for her work on medieval religious culture, comparative literature, and women's spirituality. Her most recent books are The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships (2021) and a translation of Richard Methley's collected works (2021). She is also the editor/translator of Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints' Lives (2008) and Mechthild of Hackeborn's Book of Special Grace (2017). Other works include Making Love in the Twelfth Century (2016), Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (2013), Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval German Poet and His Masterpiece (2006), God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2003), and From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (1995), as well as three books on Hildegard of Bingen.

Professor Newman has been a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern. She holds the John Evans Chair of Latin Language and Literature and previously held a Charles Deering McCormick Chair of Teaching Excellence (2003-06). Professor Newman is a past president of the Medieval Academy of America and director of the graduate cluster in Medieval Studies.

Specializations

Multilingual & Comparative Literatures, Classical & Biblical Literature, Medieval Literature, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Books

The Permeable Self Five Medieval Relationships (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

The Works of Richard Methley (translator, Liturgical Press, 2021)

Mechthild of Hackeborn "The Book of Special Grace" (translator, Paulist Press, 2017)

Making Love in the Twelfth Century: "Letters of Two Lovers" in Context (translator, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred  (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013)

The Life of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, translated in Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century (Brepols Publishers, 2012)

Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints' Lives (Brepols Publishers, 2008)

Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval German Poet and His Masterpiece (Penn State University Press, 2006)

God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)

Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World (University of California Press, 1998)

Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the "Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum" (Cornell University Press, 1998)

From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature  (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)

Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (University of California Press, 1989)

Review of Medieval Crossover

Review of Frauenlob's Song of Songs

Review of God and the Goddesses