Ruth Mazo Karras
Ruth Mazo Karras | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ruth Mazo Karras 1957 (age 68–69) |
| Occupations | Historian and academic |
| Known for | Scholar of medieval religion, sexuality, and marriage |
| Title | Lecky Professor of History |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Yale University (BA, MPhil, PhD) New College, Oxford (MPhil) |
| Thesis | Slavery in Medieval Scandinavia (1985) |
| Doctoral advisor | John Boswell, Jaroslav Pelikan |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
| Sub-discipline | |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania Temple University University of Minnesota Trinity College Dublin |
| Main interests | Masculinity, gender, marriage, slavery |
| Notable works | From Boys to Men, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages and Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others |
Ruth Mazo Karras (born in 1957) is an American historian and medievalist, whose academic research and publications are on sexuality, religion, marriage, and the history of women in the late Middle Ages. She earned a BA, an MPhil, and a PhD in history from Yale University, and an MPhil in European archaeology from the University of Oxford. Karras was the President of the Medieval Academy of America in 2019–20, and since 2018, she has held the chair as the Lecky Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin.
Karras is an author and scholar of the Middle Ages, whose interests include masculinity and sexuality in Christian and Jewish societies. Her book Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages, was named co-winner of the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History in 2012. Her other notable works include From Boys to Men and Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others.
She was an assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 to 1993, and in 2018, was appointed a visiting fellow at the University of St Andrews' Institute for Medieval Studies. Before taking up her post in Dublin, Karras was the Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.