Professor Abbe Walker and her Spring 2024 Advanced Latin students co-published a commentary, Willetrudis. “Verses about Susanna.”
July 27, 2026
Professor Abbe Walker and eight of her students have recently co-published a commentary, Willetrudis. “Verses about Susanna,” a probably twelfth-century nun’s virtue-centric retelling of a biblical story of Susanna, a woman falsely accused of adultery in retaliation for rejecting the sexual advances of two judges. Their publication marks the first time de Susanna has been translated into English and expands the collection of woman-authored Latin material that is accessible to students. The commentary developed out of Walker’s Spring 2024 advanced Latin course in women’s Latin, which she designed following Tom Hendrickson’s model for collaborative commentary building. The students in her course, Merlin Gouesse, Lauren Kelley, Emmeline Murphy, Natalie Peterson, Sophie Pong, Grace Richards, Isabel Tolman-Bronski, and Charles Drew White, are all listed as student editors for the commentary for their contributions. They transcribed the manuscript using skills they developed in a paleography workshop by Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies Richard Kieckhefer, added macrons, helped build a level-appropriate glossary for the text, and individually developed translations which they refined and developed commentary for through class discussions. Isabel Tolman-Bronski and Natalie Peterson made additional editorial contributions with Walker to individual sections and ensured the commentary retained consistency across sections.