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| Katherine H. Tachau |
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Medieval Intellectual History, History of Science, Medieval Universities, Latin Paleography, History of Medieval Manuscript Book Office: 171 Schaeffer Hall Office Hours: Tel: (319) 335-2210 E-Mail: katherine-tachau@uiowa.edu |
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Photo by William Duba |
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Research Katherine Tachau has been a member of the History Department since 1985 and is currently Professor of History. Her training as a Medievalist began at Oberlin College (B.A. in Spanish and Medieval Studies in 1972) and continued at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1979-81, she was a researcher at the Institute for Medieval Greek and Latin Philology at Copenhagen University in Denmark and subsequently held faculty positions at Montana State University and Pomona College before coming to the department. At Iowa, she has become active in both the University’s Center for the Book (http://www.uiowa.edu/~ctrbook) and the Medieval Studies Program (http://www.uiowa.edu/~medieval), for which she is currently Academic Coordinator. Katherine's research, like her teaching, is deeply interdisciplinary, bringing together the histories of medieval science, philosophy, and religious thought (with special emphasis on their development at the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval universities) with the history of medieval art. Her early publications contributed principally to the history of the science of optics and to the history of late medieval philosophy at the universities of Oxford and Paris. Authors whose work she has treated in print include (among others) the Franciscans Roger Bacon (d. 1294?), William of Ockham (d. 1348), Adam Wodeham (d. 1358), and Peter Auriol (d. 1322); the Dominican, Robert Holcot (d. 1349), and the Parisian scholar, Nicholas of Autrecourt (d. 1369). Her first book, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology, and the Foundations of Semantics, 1250-1345 (1988), was awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s John Nicholas Brown Prize (1992). Other representative publications include “Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,” Annals of Science 53 (1996), 235-267, and “What Senses and Intellect Do: Argument and Judgment in Late Medieval Theories of Knowledge,” in K. Jacobi, ed., Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns (Leiden: 1993). In addition, since 1990, she has been a co-director of the critical edition of the Opera theologica of Peter Auriol (d. 1322). More recently, her research has turned toward the intellectual world of the University of Paris in its formative decades, especially as expressed in four manuscripts called Bibles moralisées that count among the most significant artistic monuments produced at Paris under the patronage of the Capetian royal family. From this project, she has published “God’s Compass and Vana Curiositas: Scientific Study in the Old French Bible moralisée,” Art Bulletin, 80 (March, 1998), 7-33. Currently, she is writing a monograph, Bible Lessons for Kings: Scholars and Friars in Thirteenth-Century Paris and the Creation of the Bibles Moralisées. |
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Teaching Katherine's teaching is designed to help us understand the complex intersections of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions within the many cultures of Medieval Europe and their connections to those of the Middle East. She teaches a survey (cross-listed with the Departments of Classics and Religious Studies) on the Middle East and Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to Suleyman the Magnificent and a Colloquium for History majors on Medieval Heresy, Witchcraft, and Social Protest. Her upper-level undergraduate courses include: History of Ancient and Medieval Science; Medieval Intellectual History to 1150; Medieval Intellectual History 1150-1500; and the Book in the Middle Ages (cross-listed with the Center for the Book). For seniors in the Honors program and graduate students, she regularly teaches courses in the History of Medieval Universities and in Medieval Latin Paleography. Courses recently taught include:
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Selected Publications
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Awards & Service
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| © The
University of Iowa 2005. All rights reserved. |
Department of History, 280 Schaeffer Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242. Tel: 319-335-2299. FAX: 319-335-2293. |
