New books by St Cross Fellows and alumna showcase breadth of scholarship
St Cross College is delighted to celebrate the publication of three new books by members of its academic community. Spanning the history of music, early medieval literature, and contemporary religious ethnography, these works exemplify the intellectual range and excellence fostered at St Cross.
St Cross Fellow Francis Leneghan’s new book, Old English Biblical Prose, provides the the first comprehensive study of early English prose translations of the Bible. Challenging the assumption that biblical access in the early medieval period was limited to Latinate clergy, it shows how vernacular prose made scripture meaningful to both clerical and lay audiences between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Drawing on case studies such as the Prose Psalms, the Wessex Gospels, and the work of figures including King Alfred and Ælfric of Eynsham, Leneghan uncovers a rich but overlooked tradition.
British Choral Singing: A History from Medieval Times to the Present Day, by former fellow Peter Ward Jones, offers a wide-ranging history of choral singing in Britain. His book explores both sacred and secular traditions from the medieval period to the present day. While grounded in rigorous scholarship, it is written with the general choral community in mind, making it accessible to practitioners as well as academics. Readers purchasing directly from the publisher can receive a 35% discount using the code BB135 at boydellandbrewer.com.
The college also warmly congratulates alumna Lena Rose (2013, DPhil Anthropology) on the publication of Palestinian Evangelicals and Global Evangelicalism: An Ethnography of Unequal Encounter, released by Oxford University Press. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, the book examines the lived realities of Palestinian evangelicals, a small and often overlooked community. By foregrounding their perspectives, this book offers a lens on the Israel-Palestine conflict and contributes to wider debates about power, theology, and the decolonization of the anthropology of Christianity.
