Katherine Clark Walter

Katherine Clark Walter, Ph.D

Associate Professor
(585) 395-2880
kaclark@brockport.edu
Office: Liberal Arts 317

Education

  • PhD, Indiana University, 2002 - Department of History
    Dissertation: “Pious Widowhood in the High and Later Middle Ages”
  • M.A., Indiana University, 1995 - Medieval History
  • B.A.,University of Richmond, 1991 - History and Music

Areas of Specialty

  • Medieval European History
  • Gender
  • Culture and Religion

Courses Taught

  • HST 202 The Ancient World
  • HST 335 Roman Empire
  • HST 336 Medieval Europe
  • HST 390 Research Seminars
  • HST 444/544 Medieval Women
  • HST 445/545 The High Middle Ages
  • HST 455/555 The Black Death
  • HST 600 Historical Methods
  • HST 648 Tolerance and Persecution in Medieval Europe

Current Projects

I am currently working on a book, Luxurious Ministries, explores medieval liturgy’s relationship to popular religious practice and sensibilities in Europe in later medieval religious life. The book explores ceremonies—such laypeople’s vows, the reconsecration of desecrated churches and cemeteries, and penitential rituals– that integrated laypeople into the liturgical life the church. The book focuses on expressions of popular spirituality and how these were managed by an institutional Church that increasingly defined itself through images of the powerful, celibate male priest.

I am also working on one article on domestic violence in the life of the eleventh-century saint, Godlieve of Gistel and a second on ideas about gender and nature in medieval bestiaries.