Dr. Miri Rubin, professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London, will speak on “Mary: From Jewish Mother to Global Mother” on Monday, March 26. The event will be held at 7 p.m. in 3M Auditorium, Room 150, Owens Science Hall.
Dr. Miri Rubin
Rubin’s talk is based on her book Mother of God: a History of the Virgin Mary (London: Alan Lane, and New Haven (Conn.): Yale University Press, 2009). In the book, Rubin investigates the ideas, practices and images that have developed around the figure of Mary from the earliest decades of Christianity to around the year 1600. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide range of sources, including music, poetry, theology, art, scripture and miracle tales, she reveals how Mary became so embedded in Western culture that it is impossible to conceive of its history without her.
Rubin discovered history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied for her B.A. in history and completed an M.A. in medieval history in 1980. Her thesis was titled “The Oriental Politics of Charles of Anjou.”
Her desire to research the social and religious history of Europe led her to Cambridge, where under the supervision of Christopher Brooke she completed her Ph.D. and dissertation on “Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge” in 1984. After a number of postdoctoral fellowships and appointments, she was promoted to a Readership in Medieval History in 1998, and in 2000 was appointed chair of Early Modern History in the Department of History at Queen Mary University of London.
Rubin “enjoys intellectual collaboration and traveling the world in search of history and its makers. She also is involved in communicating an understanding of history to the general public in writing and through appearances on TV and radio." (Source: Queen Mary, University of London)
Rubin’s additional publications include:
- Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
- Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
- Gentile Tales: the Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999)
- Emotion and Devotion: the Meanings of Mary in Medieval Culture (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009)
This event is co-sponsored by the Luann Dummer Center for Women and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning.
