Sara Judy is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame. Broadly interested in the relationship between poetry and religion, her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century American poetry and poetics, studying how religious ideas shape our understanding of what poetry is, what it does, and what it should do. Her dissertation examines the tradition of prophecy in American poetry, considering how poets have deployed prophetic rhetoric in order to motivate social change, while remaining skeptical of prophecy’s claim to special authority. Her other research interests include lyric theory, liberation theology, and postsecularism.

Judy received her undergraduate degree from Bennington College, her Master’s degree from the University of Vermont, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Notre Dame. She has presented her research at the American Literature Association, Northeast MLA, the Modernist Studies Association, and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. In addition to participating in the Moreau College Initiative at Westville Penitentiary, she has served as Senior Managing Editor for the journal Religion & Literature.

Judy’s research has been supported by Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Notebaert Professional Development Fund, and the Graduate Student Union. She has also received grant funding from the Special Collections and Archives at UC San Diego. Her professional affiliations include the American Society for Religion and Literature, the American Comparative Literature Association, and the Academy of American Poets.