Caroline Walker Bynum, FBA (born May 10, 1941, in Atlanta, Georgia) is a Medieval scholar from the United States. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies, served as president of the American Historical Association in 1996, and President of the Medieval Academy of America in 1997–1998.

Education and career

Bynum attended Radcliffe College before completing a bachelor's degree with high honors in history at the University of Michigan in 1962, and master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 1969. Her honors include the Jefferson Lecture, a MacArthur Fellowship, and fourteen honorary degrees including degrees from the University of Chicago in 1992, Harvard University in 2005, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She taught at Harvard University from 1969 to 1976, the University of Washington from 1976 to 1988, Columbia University from 1988 to 2003, and the Institute for Advanced Study from 2003 to 2011. In 2015, she was the Robert Janson-La Palme Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Thought

Bynum's work has focused on the way medieval people, especially women, understood the nature of the human body and its physicality in the context of larger theological questions and spiritual pursuits. Bynum's work centers around late-medieval Europe. Her focus on female piety has brought increased attention to the role of women in medieval Europe.

Works

Awards and prizes

In 2016 Bynum was elected a Fellow of the Ecclesiastical History Society. In July 2017, Bynum was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.