Religious Studies Professor to Give Guest Lecture on 'The Mystical Presence of Christ'

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Richard Kieckhefer

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Richard Kieckhefer, the John Evans Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University, will present “The Mystical Presence of Christ: Three Ways Late Medieval Christians Talked about Experiencing Christ as Present” at 4:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, in room 216 of the J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. Center for Academic Excellence. Kieckhefer’s lecture is hosted by the medieval and renaissance studies program in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Kieckhefer’s research focuses on the late Middle Ages with special focus on church architecture and in the history of witchcraft and magic. He is currently writing books on “the mythical presence of Christ” in the late Middle Ages and late medieval church-building. The presence of Christ work will explore the relationship between ordinary and extraordinary piety as well as shared religious culture and exceptional religious experience. His church-building research is an inquiry into the collaboration and conflict among different interest groups in the creation of monuments meant to serve and symbolize communal interests.

He has written many articles and books including European Witch Trials, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany, Unquiet Souls, Magic in the Middle Ages (University of California Press 1976), Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Penn State University Press, 1998), Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (Oxford University Press, 2004) and others. Much of his scholarship explores the ways in which communities create and sustain a sense of shared culture in the face of difference, dissention and dispute.

Kiechkhefer received a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Saint Louis University. He earned a master of arts in philosophy and a doctorate in history at the University of Texas at Austin. The lecture will be free and open to the public.