Department
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Expertise
Katherine L. Jansen is a historian of the later Middle Ages. She is the author the award-winning
book, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) and Peace and Penance in late Medieval Italy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). She has also published three co-edited volumes:
Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009);
Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Preaching, 1200–1500
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); and Center and Periphery: Essays on Power in the Middle Ages in
Honor of William Chester Jordan (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Professor Jansen has held fellowships
from the Fulbright Foundation, Villa I Tatti (The Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies in
Florence), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned
Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and The American Academy in Rome,
where she was also a Resident in 2014. She has been Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins
University and Princeton University and taught for 30 years at The Catholic University of
America, from where she has just retired as Professor Emerita. She has been Editor of
Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies since 2019 and in 2020 was elected Fellow of the
Medieval Academy of America. Her current book project is entitled, The Relics of Rome for
which she has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship (2025-26).
Professor Jansen is no longer accepting new Ph.D. students.
Click here for vita.
Selected Publications
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Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy
Katherine L. Jansen, Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy (Princeton University Press, 2018)
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Center and Periphery
Katherine L. Jansen, G. Geltner and Anne E. Lester, ed., Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan (Brill, 2013)
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Charisma and Religious Authority
Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin, ed., Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200-1500 (Brepols, 2010)
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Medieval Italy: Texts
Katherine L. Jansen, Joanna Drell, and Frances Andrews, ed. Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)
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The Making of the Magdalen
Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2000)
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