Resident Scholar
Baylor University
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K. Sarah-Jane Murray (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Associate Professor in the Honors College at Baylor. At Princeton, she was awarded the Porter Ogden Jacobus for most outstanding graduate student in the humanities and social sciences. She also earned degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure-lsh in Lyons (Advanced Diploma in Linguistics) and Auburn University (BA in Philosophy and French).

Murray’s first book, From Plato to Lancelot (Syracuse University Press, 2008), explored the origins of vernacular storytelling in twelfth-century France. Focusing on the influence of the Timaeus and the mission of the Myth of Atlantis in particular—that storytellers preserve history, and story, by committing oral tales to writing—the book examines the convergence of classical and Celtic sources in the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes. In addition, Murray is the author of over twenty peer-reviewed articles and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Le Cygne, the journal published by the International Marie de France Society.

Since 2007, Murray’s academic research has focused on the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé, a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses to which the anonymous author appended over 60,000 lines of philosophical and theological commentary. In 2008, she was awarded a Franklin Research Award from the American Philosophical Society to study the original manuscripts in Europe. In 2009, she won an NEH summer stipend for the same project, and again in 2010, the NEH offered her a place in an NEH research summer seminar to further explore the role of Aristotelian thought in shaping the commentaries of the Ovide moralisé. In 2011, the NEH selected the first English translation of the Ovide moralisé proposed by Murray for a $210,000 three-year translation grant.

In addition to Murray’s academic interests, she is a columnist for Movieguide.org, and lectures on great books, story theory, and screenplay structure for screenwriting courses organized in the Los Angeles area by the Christian Film and Television Commission. She also consults on feature-film and documentary screenplays with producers and writers (including a NYT best seller), in Texas and in California. Livingston+McKay Media’s Primary Concern, the first documentary written by Murray (and which she also associate-produced), is due out on Georgia Public Broadcasting and PBS in late 2011. The Livingston+McKay Media group was co-founded with Renee McKay of Gainesville, GA, by Baylor alumna Joani Livingston.