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Teter, Magda
Associate Professor of History
History Department
860.685.5356
222 Church Street 203
Associate Professor, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
860.685.5356
Associate Professor, Medieval Studies
Medieval Studies Program
MA Warsaw University
MA Columbia University
MPHIL Columbia University
PHD Columbia University
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EMAIL:
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mteter@wesleyan.edu
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PERSONAL HOME PAGE:
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http://mteter.web.wesleyan.edu
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WESLEYAN PO BOX:
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History Department
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COURSES TAUGHT THIS SEMESTER:
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HIST362 - 02
HIST248 - 01
HUMS692 - 01
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RESEARCH INTERESTS:
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As a scholar of Jewish history and of early modern religious and cultural history, I specialize in Jewish-Christian relations. My book, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post Reformation Era, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006, challenges the perception that the Catholic Church triumphed in Poland and demonstrates the superficiality of the re-Catholicization of the ruling elites, whose economic interests trumped their religious loyalties.
My current book project, "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime: Sacrilege and Jews after the Reformation" (under contract with Harvard University Press) tells a story of "the sacred" and "the sacrilege," and their central place in the contest for power between church and state. It is a book about the manipulation of the meaning embodied in sacred space and sacred symbols to access, maintain, and legitimize church authority in post-Reformation Poland. At the center of it all was the Eucharist, a consecrated wafer offered to the faithful in Catholic communion. For Catholics the Eucharist, or "the host," was God. For Protestants it was "bread," symbol of various degrees of Christ. In Poland, the contest over the sacredness of the Eucharist became manifest in lay courts' adjudication of crimes against property and symbols, especially those linked to the Eucharistic wafers. Mishandling of sacred symbols and objects transformed sin into crime that received harsh sentences, including burning at the stake. "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime" casts a new light on the most infamous case of sacrilege, the accusations against Jews for stealing and desecrating the host.
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AREAS OF EXPERTISE:
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Early modern history, Jewish history, religious history, gender, eastern Europe, historiography
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ACADEMIC ASSOCIATIONS:
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Association for Jewish Studies, American Historical Association, Sixteenth Century Studies, American Catholic Historical Association, Church History, AAUP
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AWARDS WON:
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My work has been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Koret Foundation, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. In 2002, I was a Harry Starr Fellow at Harvard University. In 2007-8, I was an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.
I direct the Early Modern Project, an online resource for scholars and students of early modern history and Jewish studies (at www.earlymodern.org), which has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Columbia University, Library of Congress, University of Maryland, Yeshiva University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and Harvard's Center for Jewish Studies
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OFFICE HOURS:
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Fall 2009: Thursday 3:30-5pm or by appointment
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PUBLICATIONS:
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http://mteter.web.wesleyan.edu/mteter_publications.htm
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LAB URL:
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http://www.earlymodern.org"> http://www.earlymodern.org
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