Caroline Bynum

Caroline Walker Bynum (born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941) is an American Medieval scholar. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is a former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies. She served as President of the American Historical Association for 1996.

Bynum received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1962 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. Her honors include the Jefferson Lecture, a MacArthur Fellowship, and twelve honorary degrees including degrees from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan. Bynum's work has focused on the way medieval people understood the nature of the human body and its physicality in the context of larger theological questions and spiritual pursuits. Among her books are:

• Christian Materiality An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (2011);
• Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (2007);
• Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (1991), winner of an award from the American Academy of Religion,
• "Holy Feast and Holy Fast," (1987), and
• The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200-1336 (1995) which received prizes from Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Society.

Caroline Bynum is a 1986 MacArthur Fellow.