Kathryne Beebe

I am a late-medieval historian specializing in the cultural history of spirituality in Europe and the materiality of medieval sources, including codicology and paleography. 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 the basics of codicology and paleography, or calligraphy and to gild manuscript letters with gold leaf, so that 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 Gebetsbuch Project, The Digital Observance Network, and 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

 

Co-Edited Journal, Special Issue:

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Special Issue: “Pilgrimage and Textual Culture: The Production, Exchange, and Reception of Pilgrimage Texts in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Edited by Anthony Bale and Kathryne Beebe. Vol. 51: 1 (January 2021).

 

Articles and Book Chapters:

“The Advantages of a Grassroots-Political and Quantitative Approach for Understanding the Growth of the Observant Movement.” In Les réformes De l’Observance En Europe (XIVe-XVIe siècle), edited by Cristina Andenna, Marina Benedetti, Sylvie Duval, Haude Morvan, and Ludovic Viallet, 157–175. Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4000/13k3x.

“Imagined Pilgrimage.” In A Companion to Medieval Pilgrimage, edited by Andrew Jotischky and William Purkis, 285–315. Leeds, UK: Arc Humanities Press, 2024.

“The Eschatology of Pilgrimage Literature and the Gender of the Apocalypse in Late Medieval Europe.” In Apocalyptic Cultures in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Politics and Prophecy, edited by Jay Rubenstein and Robert Bast, 171–193. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2024.

“Jacob Klingner, Felix Fabri, and the Interpretation of Imagined Pilgrimage.” In Jerusalem and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Latin Travel Literature, c.1200-1500, edited by Martin Bauer, Philip Booth, and Susanna Fischer, 223–244. Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte, Band 19. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.998.

 “‘There is Great Delight in her Friendship’: A Tribute to Lesley Smith.” In Studies in the Sacred Page: Encounters with Medieval Manuscripts, Texts, and Exegesis, edited by Henrietta Leyser and Robert Sweetman, 12–16. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Publications, 2022.

“Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages.” In The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism, edited by Bernice Kaczynski, 300–313. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.

"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. 93 (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:

Fulbright US Scholar Award (2024-2025): $20,000.00

Fulbright-University of Innsbruck Visiting Professor, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Project: “Digital Humanities, Gender Studies and Medieval Pilgrimage Literature at the University of Innsbruck.”

♦ Courses Taught:

UE Historische Hilfswissenschaften und Medienkunde: Introduction to (Gendered) Digital History (Graduate Seminar)

VO Epochen: Pilgrimage Writing and Gender in Late-Medieval Europe and Beyond (Undergraduate Lecture)

♦ Research Project:

“Imagined Pilgrimage in Innsbruck, Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Cod. FB 3172.” Archival research required to complete my second monograph, Imagined Pilgrimage.

University of North Texas Research Seed Grant 2024: $5,000.
Project: A Pilot Study on the Growth of the Observant Religious Reform Movement in Late-Medieval Germany, at the Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde und Historische Hilfswissenschaften, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany (February 21 -July 15, 2025).

Secondary Proposer for the Successful European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) Action: CA23143 - Participation through Prayer in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World (PRAYTICIPATE) (September 2024 – present).

University of North Texas Scholarly & Creative Activity Award: $4,000.
Project: Combining Digital & Traditional Historical Methods to Understand the Growth of Observant Reform in Late-Medieval Swabia, at the Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde und Historische Hilfswissenschaften, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany (June 5 – July 30, 2023). (Second year of project funding, 2022 and 2023.)

DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) Research Fellowships (May-August 2019) and (June–July 2022).

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.

 

Teaching Awards

UNT President’s Council Teaching Award (2024)

UNT DSI CLEAR Outstanding Online Teacher & Course Award (2024)

UNT Department of History Best Graduate Advisor Award (2024)

UT Arlington College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Accolade Award (2017)

UT Arlington College of Liberal Arts Teaching Award for Tenure-Track Faculty (2017)