Ruth M Karras

Contact Me

rmk@umn.edu

Affiliations

• History
• Medieval Studies, Center for
• German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch
• Feminist Studies
• Jewish Studies, Center for
• Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Links

• Website

Educational Background & Specialties

Educational Background

• Ph.D.: History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1985.
• M.Phil.: European Archaeology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, 1981.

Curriculum Vitae

Specialties

• masculinity
• medieval Europe
• medieval sexuality
• women's and gender history
• Scandinavia
• England
• medieval Judaism

Courses Taught

• Hist 5900 - Gender in Medieval Culture
• Hist 3151W, British History to 1700
• HIST 1002/3002, Medieval Stories and Modern Echoes

Research & Professional Activities

Professional Activities

• General Editor of the Middle Ages Series: University of Pennsylvania Press
• President, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians: 2005 - 2008
• American Historical Association, Committee on Committees: 2006 - 2009
• Go-Editor, Gender & History: 2008-2013

Research

• King David as a Figure of Masculinity in Medieval Europe:

Publications

• Bennett, Judith M., and Ruth Mazo Karras, eds.. Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in Medieval Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. Routledge, 2005, 2d ed. 2012.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter, eds. Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Later Medieval Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo, Ed. Stephen Rigby. "The Wife of Bath." Historians on Chaucer: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (2014): 319-333.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. "The Reproduction of Medieval Christianity." The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Christian Theology, ed. AdrianThatcher (2014): 271-286.
• Telling the Truth about Sex in Late Medieval Paris: Karras, Ruth, Reading Medieval Studies, 40 65-81, 2014.
• The Christianization of Medieval Marriage: Karras, Ruth, University of Notre Dame Press, Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. David Mengel and Lisa Wolverton, 1-24, 2014.
• The Aerial Battle in the Toledot Yeshu and Sodomy in the Late Middle Ages: Karras, Ruth, Medieval Encounters, 19 499-533, 2013.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. "Marriage: Medieval Couples and the Uses of Tradition ." Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice (2012): 54-65.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. "The Regulation of Sexuality in the Late Middle Ages: England and France." Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 86 (2011): 1010-1039.
• Vann Sprecher, Tiffany, and Ruth Mazo Karras. "The Midwife and the Church: Ecclesiastical Regulation of Midwives in Brie, 1499-1504.." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85 (2011): 171-192.
• Bradley, Cameron, and Ruth Mazo Karras. "Masculine Sexuality and a Double Standard in Early Thirteenth-Century Flanders?“ ." Leidschrift 25 (2010): 63-77.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. "Thomas Aquinas's Chastity Belt: Clerical Masculinity in Medieval Europe." Gender & Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (2008): 52-67.
• Karras, Ruth Mazo. ""Marriage, Concubinage, and the Law"." Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe (2008): 117-129.

Awards

• Joan Kelly Prize for Best Book in Women's History, American Historical Association, 2012
• Fellowship, Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2012 - 2013
• ACLS Fellowship, 2010 - 2011
• CLA Dean's Medal, 2010
• Graduate-Professional Teaching Award, 2010
• Outstanding Woman Scholar Award, 2008
• American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship, 2004 - 2005
• Scholar of the College, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, 2003 - 2006
• Fellow, Medieval Academy of America, 2009