Dr Christine Rauer

Dr Christine Rauer

Reader

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2686
Email
cr30@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 31
Location
Castle House

 

Biography

Having received my BA and MA from Leeds and my PhD from Cambridge (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Emmanuel College), I held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and taught at the University of Birmingham, before joining the staff at St Andrews in 2002.

Research areas

Old English language and literature, Insular Latin literature, Old Norse literature; the literary history of Anglo-Saxon England, particularly non-English influences (Continental, Celtic, Scandinavian), hagiography, Beowulf, martyrologies.

I am a medievalist and Anglo-Saxonist (in the widest sense a literary historian) with a particular interest in multi-disciplinary work. My research has mainly concentrated on the relationship of Old English literature with Continental, Celtic and Scandinavian cultures and Latin literature (classical, patristic and medieval). I am also interested in the history of the English language, with particular focus on vocabulary. As my current research monograph project, I am writing a literary history of Mercia for Brepols. And together with Professor Jo Story (University of Leicester), I organise the activities for the Mercian Network, a group of researchers interested in the early medieval kingdom of Mercia.

Most recently, I have also collaborated with colleagues from the School of Computer Science to refurbish the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici database, a register of written sources covering Anglo-Saxon authors and their reading materials from the British Isles, the European Continent, the Middle East and Northern Africa. (See links below for access to the database).

As a non-native speaker of English working in the field of English, I also have an interest in Academic English as used by second-language users. I contributed a webinar on this topic to Cara (Council for At-Risk Academics) in 2023. (For webinar slides and other materials, see link given below).

I have supervised doctoral theses on infernal imagery in Old English literature, the language of Anglo-Saxon sanction clauses, death imagery in Anglo-Saxon hagiography, versions of the Bible, and exegetical traditions in Anglo-Saxon England. My students have received the George Buchanan Scholarship, the Ewan and Christine Brown Postgraduate Scholarship in the Arts and Humanities, the SGSAH AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship, the Fulbright Scholarship, and other funding. I would welcome applications (or informal enquiries) regarding doctoral work on any aspect of Old English language and literature, Anglo-Latin literature, the history of the English language, early medieval source study, early English hagiography, and the literary history of Mercia.

Personal websites:

Fontes Anglo-Saxonici Website

Fontes Anglo-Saxonici Database

A Literary History of Mercia

Mercian Network

Academic English materials

Old English Martyrology: An Annotated Bibliography

Old English Core Vocabulary

The Nosebag: Teaching Website

STARIS Flashcard Development

I regularly teach on the following modules:

  • EN2003 Medieval and Renaissance Texts
  • EN3111 Beowulf
  • EN4311 Old English Poetry: Lordship and Landscapes
  • EN4320 Old English Literature and the East
  • EN4399 Dissertation
  • EN5019 Reading the Medieval Text
  • EN5020 Old English
  • EN5045 and EN5046 Medieval English Literature in Context

And for background, here an interview from 2019 and an article on hillwalking I wrote in 2021 for the wellbeing newsletter.

Selected publications

 

See more publications