Barbara Pitkin in France and Spain

Barbara Pitkin taught at Stanford for 30 years and, since September 2026, is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, Emerita. Her scholarship centers on religious thought and culture in Europe from 1400–1650. Some of her recent classes include “The Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Europe”; “Religion Around the Globe”; and “European Reformations.”  Barbara also serves as one of the editors of The Sixteenth Century Journal, a premier scholarly journal devoted to the study of the late medieval and early modern world. Speaking about the reasons for her passion for religion in this period, Barbara explains, “religion not only played a central role in the vibrant and fascinating spirituality of people living in these times but was also interwoven with all aspects of their life—their art, architecture, legal systems, political orders and communal self-understandings.”  During our program, Barbara will explore the fascinating and controversial religious movements that flourished in southern France during medieval times. Lecture topics will include the Cathars; religious dissent, heresy, and crusade in medieval France; the ritual and ethics of dissent; and memory and the making of a Cathar landscape.

• Joined Stanford faculty in 1996

• Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, 2024–2025

• Senior lecturer, religious studies, School of Humanities and Sciences, 2008–2026

• Editor, The Sixteenth Century Journal

• Resident fellow, Lantana Hall, 2005–08

• Author, Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (2020)

• Author, What Pure Eyes Could See: Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context (1999)

• Editor, Semper Reformanda: John Calvin, Worship, and Reformed Traditions (2018)

• Editor, The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe (2006)

• Recipient, innovation grant (Redesigning the Religious Studies Gateway Course), Stanford Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, 2017

• BA, magna cum laude, German language and literature, 1981, Carleton College

• MA, religious studies, 1987, and PhD, theology, 1994—both University of Chicago