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Dr Alice Jorgensen MA, PhD, (York)Assistant Professor; Head of Sophisters

Research and Teaching Interests

My primary area of teaching and research is Old English literature, both poetry and prose. My current research focuses on emotions in Old English. I am in the final stages of work on a book entitled Emotional Practice in Old English Literature, to be published by Boydell and Brewer. In the past, I have published on shame, especially in the works of Ælfric, and on emotional performance and emotion discourse in various texts, as well as being lead editor of the 2015 Ashgate volume Anglo-Saxon Emotions: Reading the Heart in Old English Language, Literature and Culture. Earlier research concentrated on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and on representations of violence.

I teach broadly across Old and Middle English with some enjoyable ventures into more recent periods. I teach introductory modules on Old English for both undergraduates and postgraduates. At sophister (third- and fourth-year) level I offer a range of modules, varying them from year to year, including Beowulf, Women in Medieval Literature, Passions of the Past: Emotions in Old English Literature, and J. R. R. Tolkien. At Master’s level, I contribute to the MPhil in Medieval Studies and the MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies and have supervised dissertations on various aspects of Old and Middle English literature, medievalism, and fantasy literature.

I have held a number of administrative and pastoral posts within College, including being director of the MPhil in Medieval Languages, Literatures and Cultures from 2010-14 and Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning in the School of English from 2017-19. I have been a College Tutor since 2011.

I would be interested in enquiries from research students wishing to work on any aspect of Old English literature, or on emotions history topics in Middle English.

Selected Publications

My book, Emotional Practice in Old English Literature, will be published by Boydell and Brewer in 2024.

Submitted: ‘Poisoned arrows and flames of grace: Emotions inside and outside in Felix’s Life of St Guthlac and the Old English prose Life of St Guthlac’, in Cultural Models for Emotions in the North Atlantic Vernaculars, 700-1400, ed. Javier Díaz Vera, Teodoro Manrique Antón and Edel Porter (Brepols)

In proof: ‘Shame, Disgust, and Ælfric’s Masculine Performance’, in Feminist Approaches to Anglo-Saxon Studies, ed. Renée Trilling, Rebecca Stephenson and Robin Norris (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), pp. 143-68

'Why Does Mary Weep? Emotion and Gender in Advent lines 164-213’, Neophilologus 106 (2022), 127-46

‘Shame and the Breast in Ælfric’s Life of St Agatha and the Harley Psalter’, JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 120.3 (2021), 326-51

England, Ireland and the Insular World: Textual and Material Connections in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mary Clayton, Alice Jorgensen and Juliet Mullins (Tempe, Arizona: ACMRS, 2018 for 2017)

‘Reading Emotion in The Battle of Brunanburh’, Neophilologus 100 (2016), 663-76

Anglo-Saxon Emotions: Reading the Heart in Old English Language, Literature and Culture, ed. Alice Jorgensen, Frances McCormack and Jonathan Wilcox (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)

‘ “It shames me to say it”: Ælfric and the Concept and Vocabulary of Shame’, Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2013 for 2012), 249-76

Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Language, Literature, History, ed. Alice Jorgensen, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010)