Dr. Sarah Gates

Sarah Gates (Ph.D. from Boston University in 1992) specializes in Victorian literature and culture but her interests range far beyond that specialty, including modern fantasy (especially J.R.R. Tolkien), Shakespearean poetry and drama, Louise Erdrich’s novels, and the great singer-songwriters of the last 40 years. She has published critical essays in various journals, including PMLA, ELH, Studies in the Novel, Genre, Victorian Poetry, Dickens Studies Annual, and Dylan Studies and has an essay anthologized in The Norton Critical Edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. She also writes poetry occasionally (and songs even more occasionally), with work appearing in Roanoke Review, Peregrine Literary Journal, and Reed Magazine, among others. She teaches “The Victorian Novel,” “Survey of British Literature” (both I and II), “Methods of Critical Analysis,” “English Romanticism,” “J.R.R. Tolkien,” “Introduction to Poetry,” and FYP/FYS.

In May of 2019 she gave a paper on Bob Dylan’s song “The Gates of Eden” at the first international “World of Bob Dylan” conference hosted by the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.  As part of this paper, she sang and played her quotations from the song.  Canadian videographer Godfrey Jordan, who was filming the conference, got interested in this musical aspect of the paper and filmed her singing one of her own songs.  He made this music video out of it—for free!  Many thanks to Godfrey.