The Rennert Forum of Barnard College will be hosting a visit by medieval historian Elisheva Baumgarten on Thursday, April 19th. 

Her most recent project, which she is working on this year as a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, is called “Beyond the Elite,” and her public lecture will draw upon that work. 

Prof. Baumgarten’s work is on the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1400), and she teaches medieval history in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and in the Department of History at Hebrew University (Jerusalem). Her research focuses on the social history of the Jewish communities living in the urban centers of medieval Europe and especially on daily contacts between Jews and Christians. Her work seeks to include those who did not write the sources that have reached us, with a special interest in women and gender hierarchies.

Co-Sponsored by: Barnard’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies program and Columbia’s History Department