Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor of English at UCI, is working on a book project called "Uncertain Refuge: Ideas of Sanctuary in the Literature of Medieval England." She has published another book on exemplarity, "False Fables and Exemplary Truth," and assorted essays on Chaucer, Gower, Patience, historiography, and episodic romance.
I am a medievalist who is interested in ideas about religious space and sanctuary seeking throughout history. I have published two pieces for popular publications: an Op-Ed in the LA Times last year called "Why Sanctuary Cities Must Exist," and a piece in the online journal "The Conversation" on the Catholic church's history of sanctuary as it related to the refugee crisis. My research concerns medieval narrative genres from saints’ lives to romance; the dynamics of episodic narrative; sacred and secular uses of physical space; narrative and lyric; temporality in narrative; connections among classical, medieval, renaissance and later retellings; exemplarity in narrative.
