Caroline Walker Bynum, a scholar of
cultural and religious history, has been named University Professor, the highest faculty
distinction at Columbia. She is the first
woman to receive the honor given by the University Trustees earlier this month.
Bynum, who came to Columbia from the
University of Washington in 1988, has held the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Chair in
History since 1990. She also served as the
Dean of the School of General Studies from 1992-1995, and Associate Vice-President of Arts
and Sciences for Undergraduate Education in 1993-1994.
“I am very pleased and honored,”
Bynum said. “A University Professorship
moves me beyond any specific department and allows me to teach wherever in the University
I wish. That’s an attractive
possibility, because I have always done work that is thought of as interdisciplinary and
have drawn students from many disciplines, such as religion, art history, philosophy,
comparative literature and anthropology.”
Martha Howell, Chair of Columbia’s
History Department, said, “Professor Bynum is indisputably the most influential
American medievalist of her generation, honored not just for her learning and scholarly
production, but for her insights into the nature of medieval religious experience,
medieval philosophy, and the medieval social imagination.
Her meticulous and imaginative exploration of the texts and artworks that have come
down to us from these centuries has changed the way scholars, students, and general
readers alike understand the age.”
