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Barbara Pitkin

Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies

Barbara Pitkin specializes in the history of Christian thought, with a particular emphasis on the religious developments in late medieval and early modern Europe. She received her B.A. in German language and literature from Carleton College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Dr. Pitkin teaches courses on the history and future of Christianity, sixteenth-century reformations, the history of biblical interpretation, and women and religion. She is on research leave until September 2025. During this time she is not available to advise student work and will not be involved in graduate admissions for the department.

Her current research focuses on the mystical theology and biblical exegesis of the German dissident reformer Sebastian Franck. For information on this project, see the description at the Stanford Humanities Center fellows’ page

Pitkin is the author of Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (Oxford University Press, 2020) and What Pure Eyes Could See: Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in its Exegetical Context (Oxford University Press, 1999). She is also co-editor of The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2006); and editor of Semper Reformanda: Calvin, Worship, and Reformed Traditions (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018).

Recent articles include:

  • "Calvin's Commentary on Psalm 1 and Providential Faith: Reformed Influences on the Psalms in English," in Crossing Traditions: Essays on Reformation and Intellectual History in Honour of Irena Backus, ed. Maria-Cristina Pitassi and Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2018), 164-81.
  • “Calvin on the Early Reformation,” in Calvin and the Early Reformation, ed. Brian C. Brewer and David M. Whitford (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 200-24.
  • “Calvin and Politics According to the Mosaic Harmony (1563 | 1564): Text, Paratext, and Context,” in Calvin Frater in Domino, ed. Arnold Huijgen and Karin Maag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 37-56.
  • “John Calvin’s Vision of Reform, Historical Thinking, and the Modern World,” in Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, ed. Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 105-26. 
  • “Remembering Jerusalem: Memory Practices in Calvin’s Lectures on Lamentations (1562-1563),” Church History and Religious Culture 102 (2022): 374-92.
  • “Religion and the Divine,” in A Cultural History of Ideas in the Age of the Renaissance (1450-1650), ed. Jill Kraye, vol. 4 of A Cultural History of Ideas, 6 vols., ed. Peter Struck and Sophia Rosenfeld (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 121-41.
  • “The Reformation of Doubt: Incredulity, Faith, the Body, and the Search for Certitude in Early Lutheran Interpretations of John 20:24-31,” in Reading Certainty: Epistemology and Exegesis on the Threshold of Modernity, ed. Ralph Keen, Elizabeth Palmer, and Daniel Owings (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2023), 136-74.

Dr. Pitkin is an editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal, a member of the Praesidium for the International Congress for Calvin Research, and has served as an officer of the Calvin Studies Society.

Profile photo taken by LiPo Ching/Stanford University.

 

Contact

Telephone
(650) 723-2895
Office
BLDG 70 RM 72J1

Research Interests

RESEARCH SPECIALTY(IES):
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT; RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE; HISTORY OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION