Profile

Dr. S. Beth Newman Ooi teaches in the university's Writing & Rhetoric Program, the Cornerstone Program, and the Honors Program. As an instructor, she is dedicated to helping students master the communication and critical thinking skills necessary to understand the rapidly-changing world around them and to succeed both at the university and in their future endeavors. She has taught courses in premodern literature at American University (Washington, DC).

In her research, Dr. Ooi specializes in the writing of early medieval England, particularly inscribed objects and runes. She has presented her work in this field widely at national and international conferences and has published in Philological Quarterly. Some current projects concern manuscript runes and the relation of certain early medieval English inscriptions to their textual sources.

Dr. Ooi earned her Ph.D. in Medieval and Byzantine Studies and her M.A. in English at the Catholic University of America; her doctoral dissertation on early medieval English inscribed objects was titled The Speaking Objects of Anglo-Saxon England.  She earned a B.A. in English at Emory University, where she minored in Theater Studies and produced a thesis on the religious drama of later medieval England.