Stephen Surh

Visiting Lecturer in the Writing Program

Contact
Email:
ss138@wellesley.edu
Department
Writing
Medieval and Renaissance Studies

My major research interests are in Dante studies, Neoplatonism, medieval vernacular literature, apocalyptic and eschatological texts, political theology, and the thought of Augustine and its modern reception.

I also have a broader interest in medieval mystical and philosophical literature, particularly the diverse ways that writers across Jewish, Muslim, and Christian worlds articulated the Divine-world relationship, whether through their philosophy or their mysticism. Relatedly, I am also interested in the question of political theology: how the concept of political sovereignty was concretized through the power struggles between the papacy and the monarchy, a legacy that continues to pervasively define the modern world.

In my research and teaching, I converse with other mediums of art, such as cinema, to explore ways that various “existential” motifs —like the question of time and the memory; society and the problem of evil; the structure of human desire—are thematized (for example, the films of Tarkovsky, Bresson, Bergman, Wong Kai-Wai, and Antonioni).

Current and upcoming courses

The Medieval Body: An Examination

WRIT172

In this seminar, we will explore how the human body was represented in medieval writing. We will also investigate how medieval authors considered the human body metaphorically as its own kind of text, or as the medium within which society’s codes and values are written. Together we will trace enduring themes associated with the body, such as: the relationship between the soul and the flesh; food and self-image; the tensions of the sexed body (gender, power, and sexuality); the political meaning of fashion and clothing; rituals connected to illness and death; and the link between human and the divine. The authors we will read include poets and philosophers, lawyers and monks, mystics and wanderers. By studying their work, we will trace how perceptions of the body shifted throughout medieval societies, and learn how medieval understandings of the body have shaped our own modern perceptions of it.