Caroline Walker Bynum
University Professor Emerita Columbia University
Biography Caroline Walker Bynum studies the religious ideas and practices of the European Middle Ages.In the 1980s, her books Jesus as Mother and Holy Feast and Holy Fastwere instrumental in introducing the concept of gender into Medieval Studies; in the 1990s, her books Fragmentation and Redemptionand The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom studied the history of the body.Her study Metamorphosis and Identity (Zone Books, 2001) explored concepts of personal identity, of the body/soul connection, and of transformation in late medieval European thought.Her book, Wonderful Blood (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) is a study of blood piety in northern Germany in its European setting. She is currently working on the role of objects in late medieval religion, placing them in the context of contemporary theories of miracles and materiality.
