Kathryne Beebe

• Medieval History, History of the Book, Digital Humanities

I am a late-medieval historian specializing in the cultural history of spirituality in Europe, and I teach undergraduate and graduate courses that range from the early Middle Ages to the Early Modern period, and beyond to the Digital Age. In my research, I focus on questions of religious reform, gender, and pilgrimage - with a strong interdisciplinary interest in using the approaches of history, literature, anthropology, and the Digital Humanities to investigate those topics. My passion in teaching is to help students to connect their enthusiasm and curiosity for a particular time and place to an exploration of broader historical debates. Sometimes, this takes the form of an experiential, "learning-by-doing" approach, where I help students learn calligraphy or how to gild manuscript letters with gold leaf, so they can gain a richer understanding of the medieval past. Currently, I am writing a book that investigates the connection between imagined, or "virtual" pilgrimage (for travelers who journeyed only in the imagination) and Observant religious reform in medieval Europe. I am also directing or engaged with several Digital Humanities research projects, including The Digital Observance Network, as well as a GIS-based project exploring the spread of Observant reform through visualization and mapping.

UNT Faculty Profile

Selected Publication Highlights:

Monograph:

Pilgrim & Preacher: the Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8-1502). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/pilgrim-and-preacher-9780198717072?cc=us&lang=en&

Co-Edited Anthology:

Space, Place and Gendered Identities: Feminist History and the Spatial Turn, edited by Kathryne Beebe and Angela Davis. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. --Issued in paperback in 2017. https://www.routledge.com/Space-Place-and-Gendered-Identities-Feminist-History-and-the-Spatial/Beebe-Davis/p/book/9781138830493

Articles and Book Chapters:

"Journey, Geography, and Time in Felix Fabri's Sionpilger." Special Issue: "Zeit in Bewegung, Die Temporalität des Reisens, 1350-1600," edited by Christian Kiening. Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. to be assigned (2019): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-019-00090-2

"Felix Fabri und die Klosterreformen des 15. Jahrhunderts." In Die Welt des Frater Felix Fabri, edited by Folker Reichert and Alexander Rosenstock, 75-87. Weißenhorn: Anton H. Konrad Verlag, 2018. https://www.konrad-verlag.de/programm/titel/729-die-welt-des-frater-felix-fabri.html

"The Nachleben of the Gottesfreunde: Heinrich Seuse and Felix Fabri." In Friends of God. Vernacular Literature and Religious Elites in the Rhineland and the Low Countries (1300-1500), edited by Wybren Scheepsma, Gijs van Vliet, and Geert Warnar, 273-289. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2018. http://www.storiaeletteratura.it/catalogo/friends-of-god/5112

"The Jerusalem of the Mind's Eye: Imagined Pilgrimage in the Fifteenth Century." In Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, edited by Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt, 409-420. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503551043-1

"Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: the Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri's 'Die Sionpilger'." Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008): 39-70. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/261870/pdf

Selected Honors, Awards, and Grants:

DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) Research Fellowship (May-August 2019).

Inaugural University of North Texas Special Collections Coursework Development Grant (May 2019). $500.

Invited Visiting Researcher / Gastwissenschaftlerin at the Sonderforschungsbereich 923: "Bedrohte Ordnungen" / "Threatened Orders" Collaborative Research Center, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany (May-August 2018).

Invited Contributor to the Swiss National Science Foundation project, Hybride Zeiten - Temporale Dynamiken 1400-1600 / Hybrid Temporalities. Temporal Changes 1400-1600, directed by Prof. Dr. Christian Kiening of the Universität Zürich (2018-2019).

Appointment to serve as one of three judges on the inaugural Medieval Academy of America Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize Committee (2017-2020).

Digital Arts & Humanities Start-Up Grant, University of Texas at Arlington: Co-Principal Investigator, Digital Observance: Visualizing Observant Reform in the Middle Ages (January 2016-August 2016). $9,070.

Digital Arts & Humanities Start-Up Grant, University of Texas at Arlington: Co-Investigator, Spatial History Research Collaborative (January 2016-August 2016). $10,000.

University of Texas at Arlington College of Liberal Arts Dean's Accolade Award (2017).

University of Texas at Arlington College of Liberal Arts Teaching Award for Tenure Track Faculty (2017).

Invited Research Collaborator in the Leverhulme International Research Network Award project, "Pilgrim Libraries: Books and Reading on the Medieval Routes to Rome and Jerusalem," directed by Prof. Anthony Bale, Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom (2016-2018).