Barbara Pitkin in Germany

Barbara Pitkin has been teaching at Stanford since 1996, where she teaches courses on the history and future of Christianity, sixteenth-century reformations, the history of biblical interpretation, and women and religion. Barbara specializes in the history of Christian thought, with a particular emphasis on the religious developments in late medieval and early modern Europe, and her current research focuses on the mystical theology and biblical exegesis of the German dissident reformer Sebastian Franck. The author of Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (Oxford University Press, 2020) and one of the editors of The Sixteenth Century Journal, a premier scholarly journal devoted to the study of the late medieval and early modern world, Barbara is passionate about religion in this period. Barbara explains, “religion not only played a central role in the vibrant and fascinating spirituality of people living in these times but was also interwoven with all aspects of their life—their art, architecture, legal systems, political orders and communal self-understandings.”

Barbara has led numerous Stanford Travel/Study trips to Italy and Spain. She looks forward to bringing Stanford travelers to Germany to examine revolution and freedom from Martin Luther to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her lectures will explore Luther’s ideas of Christian freedom, social order, and politics; religious identity and German nationalism at the Wartburg Festival of 1817; religion and politics in Weimar Republic and under the Nazi dictatorship; and religion as political resistance in the GDR and the revolution of 1989.

• Joined Stanford faculty in 1996

• Senior lecturer, religious studies, School of Humanities and Sciences, since 2008

• Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, 2024–2025

• Resident fellow, Lantana Hall, 2005–08

• Editor, The Sixteenth Century Journal

• Author, Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (2020)

• Author, What Pure Eyes Could See: Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context (1999)

• Editor, Semper Reformanda: John Calvin, Worship, and Reformed Traditions (2018)

• Editor, The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe (2006)

• Recipient, innovation grant (Redesigning the Religious Studies Gateway Course), Stanford Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, 2017

• BA, magna cum laude, German language and literature, 1981, Carleton College

• MA, religious studies, 1987, and PhD, theology, 1994—both University of Chicago