Karl Shuve
· Associate Professor of Religious StudiesUniversity of Virginia · Classics
Active 2008–2025
About
Karl Shuve is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from McMaster University, a Master of Arts from McMaster University, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. His academic work focuses on Late Antique Christianity, including religious and cross-cultural interaction in Late Antiquity, biblical interpretation, theories of gender, sexuality, and the body, ecclesiology and ritual purity, monasticism and ascetic practice, as well as Christology and Trinitarian theology. He is currently completing a monograph titled 'The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity,' which explores themes related to early Christian identity formation.
Research topics
- Art
- Philosophy
- Literature
- Aesthetics
- Visual arts
- Linguistics
- Epistemology
- History
Selected publications
The Transformation of the Apocalyptic Heritage in Late Antique Christianity
Fortress Press eBooks · 2025-08-09
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingBRILL eBooks · 2023
1st authorCorresponding- Literature
- Art
- Aesthetics
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was the first female theologian to systematically interpret the Song of Songs. How did she undertake the task of interpretation? To whom was she writing? What effects did she hope to produce? What is notable about Hildegard’s engagement with the Song, particularly in her earliest and most famous work Scivias, is that she does not merely gloss its words, but she conceives them anew, rewriting them to convey a new meaning, so that she blurs the distinction between text and commentary. Hildegard almost certainly would have encountered the Song as a dialogue—primarily between female characters, and as the product of the feminine divine figure sapientia—with the names of the speakers written into the text. She consistently preserves this dialogic quality of the Song, as its protagonists appear alongside the wider cast of characters in Scivias, absorbed into the harmonious whole of the new vision that Hildegard has purportedly received from God. Although she was the leader of a female monastic community, Scivias was directed not only (or even primarily) at the nuns in her charge, but to the highest-ranking leaders of the church—a portion of it even receiving a public reading at a council in Trier in 1147, which was attended by the pope. The Song, I will argue, provided her with a scriptural exemplar for her own public work of dialogic theology.
Catholic University of America Press eBooks · 2023
1st authorCorresponding- Philosophy
- Art
- Literature
Church History · 2021-03-01
article1st authorCorrespondingAn abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
“A Garden Enclosed, a Fountain Sealed”
BRILL eBooks · 2021
1st authorCorresponding- Art
- Visual arts
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2019-12-05
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding5. ‘Put on the dress of a wife, so that you might preserve your virginity’: Virgins as Brides of Christ in the Writings of Tertullian was published in The Symbolism of Marriage in Early Christianity and the Latin Middle Ages on page 131.
The Politics of the Veil in Medieval Christianity
Sociology of Islam · 2019-12-13
article1st authorCorrespondingSaba Mahmood begins Politics of Piety with a question: ‘[H]ow should issues of historical and cultural specificity inform both the analytics and the politics of any feminist project?’ She notes that while many forms of ‘difference’ have been integrated within feminist theory, ‘religious difference’ has received comparatively little emphasis. She attributes this to the ‘vexing relationship between feminism and religion,’ arising from feminism’s firm situation within ‘secular-liberal politics.’ In this essay, I explore how Mahmood’s insights might enrich the study of premodern Christianity. My particular focus will be a central, yet highly contested, aspect of medieval women’s piety: the practice of nuns taking the veil during consecration, marking them as ‘brides of Christ’. I hope, with Mahmood, to consider how an analysis of ‘the particular form that the body takes might transform our conceptual understanding of the act itself’, offering new possibilities for the practice of feminist historiography.
‘Put on the dress of a wife, so that you might preserve your virginity’
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2019-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingIn the third century, Christian virgins began to be described as brides of Christ. The nuptial metaphor had been employed since the earliest decades of the Christian movement to speak of communal identity, with the Church being the bride, but it is not until the third century, in the writings of Tertullian of Carthage, that we first encounter the notion that specifically virgin women embody the bride. Tertullian is clear that virgins are to conduct themselves in public as wives, which includes the wearing of a veil. This chapter focuses particularly on dress to explore what kind of ‘marriage’ it was that these virgins were believed to enter into with Christ, and what this means for their social identities.
2019-11-04
other1st authorCorresponding‘Put on the dress of a wife, so that you might preserve your virginity’
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2019-11-04
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Alessandro Scafi
- 1 shared
P Wolfgang
Fordham University
- 1 shared
M. Turner
Liverpool Women's Hospital
- 1 shared
Lasse Hodne
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- 1 shared
Sebastián Salvado
- 1 shared
Anna Rebecca
VID Specialized University
- 1 shared
G David
Boston College
- 1 shared
G Martha
The University of Texas at Austin
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