Harvard Scholar Karen King to Speak at Williams College

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., October 9, 2014—Williams College welcomes Karen King to present “Is God an Author? The Apocalypse of John and Apocryphon of John” on Friday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. in the Paresky Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public.

King has been a member of the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School since 1997, and in 2009 became the first woman to be named as the school’s Hollis Professor of Divinity, the oldest endowed professorship in the U.S. A scholar specializing in the history of Christianity, she is particularly interested in gender studies, discourses of normativity (orthodoxy and heresy), and religion and violence.

She received her B.A. with honors in religious studies from the University of Montana, Missoula and her Ph.D. from Brown University. King also studied at the Free University in Berlin, and she taught for 13 years at Occidental College before joining the faculty at Harvard.

King is the author of numerous publications, including What is Gnosticism?, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, and The Secret Revelation of John. She has received research grants and fellowships from the Henry Luce Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. The Graduate School of Brown University awarded her with the Horace Mann Medal in 2013. King holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and she is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the International Association for Coptic Studies.

This event is sponsored by the Croghan Endowment for Biblical Studies and the Book Unbound initiative. It will be followed by “Authorship and the Early Christian Book: A Symposium and Workshop” on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 9 a.m. in Griffin Hall, room 7, which features three additional scholars of early Christianity.

END

For building locations on the Williams campus, please consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Communications (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/map

Online:
williams.edu
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Published October 9, 2014