Mary A. Suydam has taught religion, history, and women's and gender studies courses at Kenyon since 1991. Her research field is medieval mysticism, with an emphasis on the performance aspects of mysticism (the public and performative, rather than the private and ineffable, aspects of the mystical experience). Her most current research concerns the mystical spirituality of communities of women (called Beguines) in 13th and 14th century Flanders. She is the author of numerous articles about Hadewijch of Antwerp, a thirteenth-century Beguine. She is the co-editor (with Ellen Kittell) of The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries (Palgrave: 2003), and the co-editor (with Joanna Ziegler) of Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality (St. Martins, 1999).

Education

B.A., Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara

Courses Taught

2008/2009:

RLST 101: Introduction to the Study of Religion
RLST 220: Faith of Christians
RLST 225: Introduction to the New Testament
WMNS 330: Feminist Theory

Other Courses:

RLST 313: Mysticism, Magic and Kaballah in Judaism
RLST 328: Women in Christianity
RLST 329: Christian Mysticism
RLST 310: The Hebrew Bible
RLST 491: Blood, Power, and Gender in Christianity
RLST 91: Blood, Power and Gender in Judaism and Christianity
INDS 231: The Holocaust: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Class Web Projects

Marginality and Commonality in Medieval Europe
Blood, Power, and Gender in Christianity and Judaism
Blood, Power, and Gender in Western Cultures