Dr Alicia Smith, Corpus Christi

acs96@cam.ac.uk

 

Biographical Information

I am the Parker Library Early-Career Research Fellow for 2023/24. I completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2020; in 2022/23 I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

Research Interests

My current research work focuses on the figure of the 'harlot saint' Thais and how this early Christian conversion story was used in medieval culture and manuscript compilations. My doctoral work considered the place of prayer in literature for and about solitary recluses in high medieval England. I also have interests in twentieth-century medievalism, particularly that of T.S. Eliot and the Inklings.

Selected Publications

Alicia Smith, “‘Each way means loneliness – and communion’: reading anchoritic literature with T.S. Eliot’, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 13:1-2 (2022), 21-53.

Alicia Smith, ‘“The example of Elisha”: prayer and prophetic discourse in the Regula Reclusorum’, Journal of Medieval Latin, 31 (2021), 57-78.

Alicia Smith, ‘The anchoritic body at prayer in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Liber Confortatorius’, Journal of Early Middle English, 3:1 (2021), 101-14.