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Anna Harrison
Assistant Professor of Theological Studies
Department of Theological Studies
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Suite 3700
Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659, USA
Office: University Hall 3845
Email: annaharrison@lmu.edu
Phone: (310) 568-6236
Fax: (310) 338-1947 |
Academic Background
Columbia University, Ph.D. in Religion, 2007
Fordham University, M. A. in Theology, 1994.
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Current Areas of Research Professor Harrison is at work on a book titled, "
Thousands and Thousands of Lovers": Sense of Community Among the Nuns of Helfta.
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Courses Currently Teaching
Professor Harrison teaches in the area of the history of Christianity. Courses she teaches include: Women in Pre-Modern Christianity, History of Christianity I, History of Christianity II, Early Christian Thought and Practice, Medieval Religious Thought and Practice, and Augustine.
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Professional Bio
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Selected Publications
Articles
“The Nuns of Helfta,” in Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Julia A. Lamm (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming).
“‘I Am Wholly Your Own’: Liturgical Piety and Community Among the Nuns of Helfta,” in Church History 78:3 (2009), pp 549-83.
“‘Oh! What Treasure Is in This Book?’: Writing, Reading, and Community at the Monastery of Helfta,” in Viator 39.1 (2008), pp. 75-106.
“‘If one member glories…’: Community Between the Living and the Saintly Dead in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Feast of All Saints,” in History in the Comic Mode: Essays in Honor of Caroline Walker Bynum, ed. Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp.25-35 and 299-302.
Co-written with Caroline Walker Bynum, “Gertrude, Gender, and the Composition of the Herald of Divine Love,” in Freiheit des Herzens: Mystik bei Gertrud von Helfta, ed. Michael Bangert, vol. 2 of Mystik und Mediävistik (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), pp. 57-76.
“Community Among the Saints in Heaven in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Feast of All Saints,” in Last Things: Eschatology and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 191-204 and 337-444.
Encyclopedia Entries
“Gertrude of Helfta,” in Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, ed. George Thomas Kurian, Bernard McGinn et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming).
“Mechtild of Magdeburg,” in Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, ed. George Thomas Kurian, Bernard McGinn et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming).
Selected Book Reviews and Booknotes
Review of Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Susan Marti (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008) in Religious Studies Review (forthcoming).
Review of Elizabeth A. Dreyer, Holy Power, Holy Presence: Rediscovering Medieval Metaphors for the Holy Spirit (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 2007) in Spiritus (2009).
Review of James A. Wiseman, Spirituality and Mysticism: A Global View (New York, NY: Orbis Books, 2006)in Religious Studies Review (2008).
Review of Paul Elie, ed., A Tremor of Bliss: Contemporary Writers on the Saints (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994) in Commonweal (1995).
Review of Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) in Crisis (1995).
Additional Publications
“Need,” in Commonweal (2009).
“Bibliography: The Nuns of Helfta,” in Monastic Matrix, a web-based resource for the historical study of women religious.
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Latest News
Recent Grants and Prizes
Judith Lee Ridge Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, 2009, for best article in any field of history for “‘Oh! What Treasure Is in This Book?’: Writing, Reading, and Community at the Monastery of Helfta,” in Viator 39:1 (2008), pp. 75-106
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2008
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, LMU, Institutional Matching Grant, 2008
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, LMU, Catholic Studies Curriculum Development Grant, 2008
Selected Conference Presentations and Invited Talks
“Taking Flight into the Virgin’s Arms: Death and the Saints in the Book of Special Grace"
Western Association of Women Historians, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, April, 2009.
“Increasing the Joy of the Saints: The Piety of the Nuns of Helfta”
Medieval Association of the Pacific, the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, March 2009.
“The Joy of the Dead and the Helfta Nuns”
Death: Mortality and Immortality in Early Cultures, Group for the Study of Early Cultures, University of California, Irvine, November 2008.
“Beautiful Gifts: Creating Community in Gertrude of Helfa’s Herald”
Surplus/Excess, the Association of Economics and Social Analysis, April 2008
“Self and Sisters: Community in the Liturgical Piety of the Nuns of Helfta”
44th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2008.
“‘Thousands and Thousands of Lovers:’ The Holy Dead and the Nuns of Helfta”
Annual Meeting, American Academy of Religion, November 2007.
“Liturgical Piety Among the Nuns of Helfta”
California Medieval History Seminar, October 2007.
“Attitudes Toward Dying and Dead Christians on the First Crusade”
Death and the Hope of Life in the Middle Ages (800-1350), Princeton Graduate Students Conference, March 1999.
“Eating Together and Sleeping Separately: Images of Life in Heaven in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Feast of All Saints”
32nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 1997.
“Community in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Feast of All Saints”
Seventh Annual Medieval Guild Conference, “Death, Judgment, and the Eschatological Imagination,” Columbia University, October 1996.
“Doubt in Angela of Foligno’s Memorial”
30th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 1995.
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Personal Message
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Personal Website
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