Rachel Fulton

Rachel Fulton

Fellow: Awarded 2008
Field of Study: Religion

Competition: US & Canada

University of Chicago

Rachel Fulton is an Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Chicago.  She received her B.A. in history and religious study from Rice University in 1986, and those interests carried through her graduate work as well: she earned a Diploma in Historical Studies form Cambridge University, and an M. Phil. and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, the latter in 1994. That same year she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, as an assistant professor. Her academic specialties include the history of Christianity, medieval European intellectual, cultural, and religious history, and scriptural exegesis and hermeneutics, and her researches in these fields have produced many well-received publications.  Her first book, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200 (Columbia UP, 2002), received the Morris D. Forkosch Prize  from the Journal of the History of Ideas, the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America, and was selected as a Choice outstanding academic title.  Among her other publications are "The Virgin in the Garden, or Why Flowers Make Better Prayers," Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 4, No. 1 (2004), 1-23; "’Taste and See the Lord is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West," Journal of Religion, 86, No. 2 (2006), 169-204; and "Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice," Speculum, 81, No. 3 (2006), 700-733.  More recently, she and Bruce Holsinger edited History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Commjnities and the Matter of Person (Columbia UP, 2007). The tentative title of the study she is undertaking as a Guggenheim Fellow is "’Lord, Open My Lips’: The virgin Mary and the Art of Prayer, 1000-1500."

Ms. Fulton has been a Mellon New Directions Fellow, and a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities twice, as well as an ACLS Fellow at the National Humanities Center.  She is also a competitive fencer, and currently ranks 19th nationally in the veteran women’s foil standings.

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