Caroline Walker Bynum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Caroline Walker Bynum (born May 10, 1941 in Atlanta ) is an American historian .

Caroline Walker Bynum had Scottish-Irish as well as southern ancestors. Her parents were professors. She attended Grammar School and Henry Grady High School (1954-1958) in Atlanta. Bynum first studied philosophy and literature. Then she switched to history. Bynum attended Radcliffe College from 1958 to 1960 and made a Bachelor (1962) at the University of Michigan and a Master in 1963 from Harvard University . 1969 followed the Ph.D. at Harvard University. The first academic positions followed at Harvard (1969–1973) and at the Divinity School (1973–1976). From 1976 to 1988 she taught as an associate professor at the University of Washington . In 1988 she took over the Morris and Alma Schapiro Chair at Columbia University . From 1993 to 1994 she was dean of the School of General Studies. She was president of the American Historical Association in 1996 and president of the Medieval Academy of America from 1997 to 1998 . In 1999 she was appointed university professor, the faculty's highest honor. She was the first woman in Columbia with this official title. Bynum taught at the Institute for Advanced Study from 2003 until her retirement in 2011 .

Her main research interests are the religious and intellectual history of Western Europe from the 12th to 15th centuries. Bynum's work on the body understanding of religious women in the Middle Ages became fundamental. Her presentation Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987) found international recognition . For this portrayal she received the Governor's Award of Washington State in 1988 and the Philip Schaff Prize of the American Society of Church History in 1989 . For her book The Resurrection of the Body , she received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize and the Jacques Barzun Prize (1995) from the American Philosophical Society for best representation in cultural history.

Bynum was awarded numerous other scientific honors and memberships for her research. From 1986 to 1991 she was a MacArthur Fellow . She became a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1989 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 . In 1995 she became a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society . Bynum has received honorary doctorates from 14 universities (including the University of Chicago , Colgate University and Northwestern University ). In 2007, a commemorative publication entitled History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person was dedicated to her, edited by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger . In 2012 she was elected as a foreign member of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts of the Federal Republic, and in 2017 as a Corresponding Fellow at the British Academy .

Bynum was married to the sociologist Guenther Roth (1931-2019).

Fonts (selection)

  • Docere Verbo and Exemplo. An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality (= Harvard Theological Studies. Vol. 31). Scholars Press, Missoula MT 1979, ISBN 0-89130-267-0 .
  • Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (= Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Vol. 16). University of Califormia Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1982, ISBN 0-520-04194-1 .
  • Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (= The New Historicism, Studies in Cultural Poetics. Vol. 1). University of Califormia Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1987, ISBN 0-520-05722-8 .
  • Mysticism and asceticism in the life of medieval women: some remarks on the typologies by Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch. In: Wolfgang Schluchter (Hrsg.): Max Weber's view of occidental Christianity. Interpretation and criticism (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. Stw 730). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-28330-8 , pp. 355-382.
  • Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. Zone Books, New York NY 1991, ISBN 0-942299-62-0 .
    • German (abbreviated): Fragmentation and Redemption. Gender and body in the beliefs of the Middle Ages (= Edition Suhrkamp. Es 1731 = NF 731). From the American by Brigitte Große. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-11731-9 (Contains, among other things, a fundamental analysis of Victor Turner ).
  • The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (= Lectures on the History of Religions. NS Vol. 15). Columbia University Press, New York NY et al. 1995, ISBN 0-231-08126-X .
  • Metamorphosis and Identity. Zone Books, New York NY 2001, ISBN 1-890951-22-6 .
  • Wonderful Blood. Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. PENN, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 2007, ISBN 978-0-8122-3985-0 .
  • Christian Materiality. An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. Zone Books, New York NY 2011, ISBN 978-1-935408-10-9 .

literature

  • Jennifer Scanlon: American women historians, 1700s – 1990s. A biographical dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 1996, ISBN 0-313-29664-2 , pp. 34-36.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Elections to the British Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research , British Academy , July 21, 2017, accessed on July 21, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Bynum, Caroline Walker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta