Research Profile

My area of research covers the early Christian and medieval period with a focus on Augustine (including the history of Augustinian reception), Carolingian thought, twelfth century humanism and late medieval vernacular women’s mysticism. Themes of special interest to me are anthropology and the role of creation and nature, especially their correlation. I have recently developed an interest in modern American religious thought as found in R.W. Emerson and William James.

Teaching Profile

Theological Criticism: Creation and Gender; Three Medieval Women: Fate and Voice in Heloise, Hildegard and Hadewijch; The Religious Thought of Emerson and William James$; Creation in East and West: From Origen to Eriugena; Incarnation and the Body from Tertullian to Thomas Aquinas

Selected Publications

Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking. From Eriugena to Emerson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020)

Co-edited with Susan Schreiner, Augustine our Contemporary. Examining the Self in Past and Present (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2018)

Co-edited with Karla Pollmann, The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, 3 volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Co-edited with B.S. Hellemans and M.B. Pranger, On Religion and Memory (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013)

Co-edited with Karla Pollmann, Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity. The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2007)

From Paradise to Paradigm. A Study of Twelfth-Century Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 2004)

Contact

Prof. Willemien Otten
℅ The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 E. 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Phone: +17737021901
Fax: +17737028223

Email: wotten@uchicago.edu
Homepage: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/willemien-otten