Ayoush specializes in devotional, contemplative, and other spiritual writing from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Her research has focused on emotion in English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman texts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She has particular interests in literature written for religious recluses in the pre- and post-Conquest periods.
She is currently working on a comparative study across English and Arabic, looking at 'feeling' in medieval Christian and Islamic contemplative texts.
Publications of the past four years:
Book:
Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015).
Articles and chapters:
‘What Grace in Presence: Affective Literacies in The Chastising of God’s Children and Church Wall Paintings’, in Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 319-335.
‘Moving Lights: An Affective Reading of On leome is in this world ilist and Church Wall Paintings’, in Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems, ed. Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 31-44.
‘The Vagabond Mind: Depression and the Medieval Anchorite’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 6 (2017), 141-68.
‘Seeking Intimacy in the Wooing Group’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 43.2 (2017), 157-85.
‘The Wounded Beloved: Affective Wounding in Ancrene Wisseand the Wooing Group’, Leeds Studies in English, New Series 47 (2016), 115-35.
‘Liminal Performance in Hali Meiðhad’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 42.1 (2016), 28-43.
‘Remembrance and Time in the Wooing Group’, in Reconsidering Gender, Time and Memory in Medieval Culture, ed. Elizabeth Cox, Liz Herbert McAvoy and Roberta Magnani (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), pp. 79-94.
Reviews:
Review of Medieval Anchorites in their Communities, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Cate Gunn (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017): Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 7 (2018), 329-332.
Review of Speculum Inclusorum: A Mirror for Recluses, ed. E. A. Jones, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013): JEGP 114.4 (2015), 596-99.
Ayoush is a SEDA-accredited tutor; she teaches and lectures in the following areas:
Old English (Prelims Paper 2; FHS Course II Paper 1)
Middle English (FHS Course I Paper 2 and Course II Papers 2 & 3)
Andalusian Arabic lyric (Course II Paper 2)
Various dissertation topics in Old English and Middle English-- including saints' lives, devotional literature, medieval drama, Arthurian romance, and 'Beowulf' (Paper 7)
