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Rachel Fulton Brown Associate Professor of Medieval History
History of Christianity; Medieval European Cultural, Religious, and Intellectual History; Liturgy and Prayer; Devotion to the Virgin Mary and Christ; Scriptural Exegesis and Hermeneutics; Creativity and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Weblogs: Fencing Bear at Prayer, Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Current Research My principal research concerns the cognitive and experiential making of prayer in the monastic culture of the medieval West, with special emphasis on the practices that developed from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries for prayer to the Trinity and the Virgin Mother of God. These practices included the recitation of an office of the Virgin modeled on the monastic liturgy of the Hours and the meditation on the Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin as mediated through the practice of the rosary. My immediate purpose is to find a way to describe monastic and Marian prayer as a practical art, that is, as a practice that takes skill and uses particular tools. My ultimate goal is to develop an understanding of the meaning and importance of the aesthetics of worship, that is, of worship as itself a creative act. In pursuit of this goal, I am currently at work on two major projects: a book-length study entitled The Virgin Mary and the Art of Prayer on the history, experience, and meaning of the so-called Little Office, or Hours of the Virgin Mary, described in part here; and a translation of John of Garland's Epithalamium beate virginis Marie, in progress here. Selected Publications "Three-in-One: Making God in Twelfth-Century Liturgy, Theology and Devotion." In European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, eds. Thomas F.X. Noble and John Van Engen, pp. 468-97. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Review of Gary Waller, The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture (2011), in The Medieval Review 12.02.29. "Mary." In Christianity in Western Europe c. 1000-c. 1500, eds. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons, pp. 283-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person. Co-edited with Bruce Holsinger. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. "Praying by Numbers." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd. series, volume 4 (2007): 195-250. "Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice." Speculum 81.3 (July 2006): 700-733."'Taste and See That the Lord is Sweet' (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West." The Journal of Religion 86.2 (April 2006): 169-204. "The Virgin in the Garden, or Why Flowers Make Better Prayers." Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 4 (Spring 2004): 1-23.
From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
"'Quae est ista quae ascendit sicut aurora consurgens?': The Song of Songs as the Historia for the Office of the Assumption." Mediaeval Studies 60 (1998): 55-122. "Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs." Viator 27 (1996): 86-116. The above research has been supported with fellowships from the National Humanities Center (1998-99), the American Council of Learned Societies (1998-99, 2008-09), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2008-09), and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (1992-93, 2003-06), among others. Courses offered
My teaching at the University of Chicago has been recognized with the Provost's Teaching Award (2006) and the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2007). Medieval Studies at The University of Chicago
Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in Medieval Studies 
Fencing Ask Fred
My USFA ranking: D09 Foil Other Useful Links
JP Brown's Serious Lego
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