Ann Matter teaches and studies the history of Christianity in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, with special attention to the history of spirituality and devotion, the interpretation of the Bible, and the roles of women. Her focus is on the Latin tradition, and on textual studies and editing, especially in Latin and Italian.
Medieval Islam; Islamic Law.Early Islamic Legal Theory: the Risala of Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (E. J. Brill, 2007); editor (with D. Stewart and S. Toorawa) of Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of George Makdisi(E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2005) and (with D. Stewart) of Essays in Arabic Literary Biography II: 1350-1850 (Harrasowitz, 2009).
Interests
Eighteenth-century British literature, contemporary South Asian writing in English, and literary and critical theory.
Gender, sexuality, feminist studies, modern Japanese literature, theater, and film studies. Author of Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex, Love, and Labor; Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender, and Nationalism.
19th- and 20th-century French fiction; science and literature; spatial theory; urbanism; popular crime fiction; the nouveau roman; Optiques: the Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction (2006); Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Space and Science in French Crime Fiction (2016); and Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics, co-edited with Robert Rushing (2018).
Hebrew and Israeli literature combining psychoanalytic, biographical and cultural-historical approaches. Lo Kabrosh: Gilgule Imagim Ve-tavniyot Be-shirat Yehuda Amichai [Not Like a Cypress: Transformations of Images and Structures in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai] (1994); Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet (UPNE 2008).