Mary Carruthers

Her research interests lie in the psychological, socio-cultural, and textual aspects of medieval rhetoric in the Latin traditions, in reading practices deriving from monastic meditation and prayer, and in questions of literacy and orality in various medieval literary cultures, clerical and courtly. Her influence over the field of medieval studies can be measured by the large number of books and conferences over the past decade devoted to 'memory' and 'commemoration'. Her work on verbal and non-verbal rhetoric (memory, performance, invention) is considered seminal and widely cited by art historians, musicologists, psychologists and even neuroscientists.  Few scholars have such a wide interdisciplinary influence.