Karl Morrison, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Professor of History and Poetics, Rutgers

Karl Morrison was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1936. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Mississippi. From there, he went on to do graduate work at Cornell University where he graduated with an MA in 1957 and a PhD in 1961. From 1961 to 1988, Dr. Morrison taught at several prestigious institutions including Stanford University (Acting Instructor, 1960 Ð 61), the University of Minnesota (Instructor, 1961 Ð 62; Assistant Professor, 1962 Ð 64), Harvard University (Assistant Professor, 1964 Ð 65), the University of Chicago (Associate Professor, 1964 Ð 65; 1968 Ð 84), and the University of Kansas, where he was the Ahmanson-Murphy Distinguished Professor of Medieval and Renaissance History from 1984 Ð 1988. Dr. Morrison has been at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick) since 1988.

Dr. MorrisonÕs research interests include Medieval history, intellectual history and the history of Christianity. He has been a councilor for the Medieval Academy of America (1972 Ð 75), and president of the Medieval Association of the Midwest (1976 Ð 77) and the Medieval Association of Mid-America (1988 Ð 89). Dr. Morrison was also on the Board of Directors for the International Museum of the History of Medicine and Hall of Fame in Chicago (1982 Ð 84). Karl Morrison was the consultant for Time-Life Books on the volume Barbarian Europe, and the Medieval History consultant for Encyclopedia Britannica from 1969 Ð 72. He has also been an ordained priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States since 1999.

Dr. Morrison is currently studying the history of Christian art in Western Europe from the beginning until the 19th century.

Select Bibliography:

(With T. E. Mommsen) Imperial Lives and Letters of the Eleventh Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962.

The Two Kingdoms: Ecclesiology in Carolingian Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Rome and the City of God. An Essay on the Constitutional Relationship of Empire and Church in the Fourth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, Transactions, 1964.

Carolingian Coinage. New York: American Nuministic Society, 1967.

Tradition and Authority in the Western Church: ca. 300 Ð 1140. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

EuropeÕs Middle Ages: One or Many? (volume 3 in Scott, Foresman World Civilization Series, William H. McNeill, editor). Glenview: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1970.

The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

"I am You": The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology and Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth Century Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos, with a Translation of Herman-JudahÕs "A Short Account of His Conversion". Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.

Understanding Conversion. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002. (Selected for on-line publication in the History E-Book Project of the American Council of Learned Societies; Awarded the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America)