The Jefferson Lecture
On March 22, 1999, Caroline Walker Bynum delivered the twenty-eighth annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In her lecture, "Shape and Story: Metamorphoses in the Western Tradition," Bynum examined myths of human transformation—-from tales by Ovid to medieval werewolf legends—-for the insight they can bring to the human experience.
For the past thirty years, she has explored the medieval mind for clues to our past and explanations of our present. "The Middle Ages is, in many ways, not like the modern world," Bynum explains. "I think understanding this gives you a built-in contrast within your own tradition. The only way to understand yourself or your own society is by seeing how it might be other." The Middle Ages caught her eye at an early age. Bynum remembers seeing a postcard collection of medieval Italian paintings as a girl and a gothic novel written with a friend in high school. Undergraduate work at Radcliffe College and the University of Michigan led to a Woodrow Wilson fellowship at Harvard University, where she began her graduate studies in 1962. Her doctoral dissertation on life in the cloisters and religious affiliation in the early Middle Ages was published in 1979 as Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality.
After receiving her doctorate in 1969, Bynum taught in Harvard's Department of History for four years before joining the Harvard Divinity School's Department of Church History as an associate professor. In 1976, she moved to the University of Washington, accepting a full professorship in History and adjunct appointments in Religious Studies and Women's Studies. During her twelve years at Washington, Bynum published two important books, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages and Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Jesus as Mother garnered critical acclaim in academic circles and also found its way off campuses and into generalist bookstores. Holy Feast won the Governor's Award of the State of Washington in 1988 and the Philip Schaff Prize of the American Society for Church History in 1989.
A five-year MacArthur Fellowship brought Bynum international recognition, a break from teaching, and the chance to work on her next book. In 1988 she joined the history faculty at Columbia University, where she still teaches. The next book, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (1991), won the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion. Her fifth book, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200-1336, was published by Columbia University Press in 1995. It won Phi Beta Kappa's Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize for the best book on "the intellectual and cultural condition of man" and the Jacques Barzun Prize for the best work in cultural history from the American Philosophical Society.
Bynum's scholarly achievements and creative talents are reflected in even a partial listing of her awards and posts: six honorary degrees from American universities; membership in a dozen scholarly societies, including the Medieval Academy of America, the American Historical Association, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the American Philosophical Society; an appointment as president to the Medieval Association of the Pacific, the American Catholic Historical Association, the American Historical Association, and the Medieval Academy of America. She was the recipient of Columbia University's Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. At Columbia, Bynum was the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Chair in History, Dean of the School of General Studies, and Associate Vice President of Arts and Sciences for Undergraduate Education.
Last year, Bynum was the first woman to be named University Professor at Columbia, the highest distinction bestowed by that institution. The breadth of her scholarship attracts students from many disciplines, and she has sponsored dissertations outside her own department in the fields of religion, comparative literature, women's studies, English, and art history. "There is new material to be found," she has said, "but even if there were not, there is always history to be written. I cannot see how there can be any humanities without history at the center."
The Jefferson Lecturership is the highest honor the federal government bestows for achievement in the humanities. It was established in 1972, and carries a $10,000 stipend.