Lee Palmer Wandel

Biography

My field of research is early modern Christianity. I study texts, objects, practices, and identities in the early modern world. My teaching area is early modern Europe, 1492 to 1648, and as it entered a wider world.

Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan
M.A., Brown University
B.A., University of California-Santa Cruz

Books

Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion

Lee Palmer Wandel. Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion. Brill, 2016.

Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion makes two broad arguments. First, the sixteenth century witnessed a fundamental transformation in Christians’, Catholic and Evangelical, conceptualization of the nature of knowledge of Christianity and the media through which that knowledge was articulated and communicated. Christians had shared a sense that knowledge might come through visions, images, liturgy; catechisms taught that knowledge of ‘Christianity’ began with texts printed on a page. Second, codicil catechisms sought not simply to dissolve the material distinction between codex and person, but to teach catechumens to see specific words together as texts. The pages of catechisms were visual—they confound precisely that constructed modern bipolarity, word/image, or, conversely, that modern bipolarity obscures what sixteenth-century catechisms sought to do.

The Reformation: Towards a New History

Lee Palmer Wandel. The Reformation: Towards a New History. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

This book brings together two histories, of the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere that began in 1492 and the fragmentation of European Christendom in the sixteenth century, to recast the story of the Reformation. It restores to the polemics—“idolatry,” “true Christian,” “barbarian”—their deeply divisive force, even as it helps us to see past those polemics to divergent understandings of divinity, matter, and human nature. Every aspect of human life, from marriage and family through politics to conceptualizations of space and time was called into question. Debates on human nature and conversion forged new understandings of religious identity. Divergent understandings of human nature and its relationship to the material world divided Europeans on the nature and function of images and ritual. By the end of the century, there was not one “Christian religion,” but multiple understandings of person, matter, space, time—and of “religion” itself.

The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy

Lee Palmer Wandel. The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

This study traces the evolution of the words, “this is my body,” “this do,” and “remembrance of me” that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. Lee Wandel focuses on the consequences of the different interpretations of these simple words in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions. Finally, Wandel argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.

History Has Many Voices: In Honor of Robert McCune Kingdon

Lee Palmer Wandel. History Has Many Voices: In Honor of Robert McCune Kingdon. Vol. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, vol. 63, Truman State University Press, 2003.

This volume presents essays from eight scholars who trained with Robert Kingdon, a vanguard of early modern studies. He required students to go to primary sources, yet they were free to pursue their own curiosity. No matter what their approach to the sources, students were held to a high standard of thoroughness, precision, and attention to detail. This festschrift displays something of the diversity of language, source materials, methods, and visions that Kingdon encouraged in his students during his forty-year career in graduate education.

A History of Civilization, Vol. III: Europe in a Wider World: 1350-1650

Lee Palmer Wandel (Co-editor), and Robin W. Winks (Co-editor). A History of Civilization, Vol. III: Europe in a Wider World: 1350-1650. Oxford University Press, 2003.

This book is a compact, accessible history of the continent, during a time when it did not yet dominate the world in which it was situated. The text discusses the major events of the period, and also seeks to restore interconnections lost by thinkers who divided the period into “The Renaissance” and “The Reformation.” With twenty-five illustrations and nine detailed maps, this short textbook is perfect for students of European history

Facing Death

Lee Palmer Wandel. Facing Death. Yale University Press, 1996.

We have learned a great deal in recent years about keeping death at bay through medical technology. We are less well informed, however, about how to face death and how to understand or articulate the emotional and spiritual needs of the dying. This profound and eloquent book brings together medical experts and distinguished authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural, and religious responses to death. The book helps both medical personnel and patients to view death less as an adversary and more as a defining part of life. In the first half of the book, physicians and the founder of Connecticut Hospice discuss the current clinical setting for dying, with attempts to find the balance between alleviating suffering and providing life support, the problem of finding a peaceful death, and the differences the AIDS epidemic has made in our attitudes toward dying. In the second half of the book, theologians, historians of religion, anthropologists, literary scholars, and pastors describe Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese perceptions of death and rituals of mourning. An epilogue considers the resonances between medicine and the humanities, as well as the essential differences in their approaches to death.

Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel

Lee Palmer Wandel. Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

This is an effort to recover the participation of ordinary Christians in the enterprise of Reformation through an exploration of the meaning of acts of iconoclasm: what they tell us about the role of images in Christianity and about ordinary people’s theologies. Its focus, on ordinary Christians, distinguishes it from other studies of Reformation iconoclasm. Its concern, to recover their agency in Reformation and to discern their theology in acts, may be of interest to scholars in American history, anthropology, and religious studies.

Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich

Lee Palmer Wandel. Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’S Zurich. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

In this elegantly written book, Lee Wandel discusses the relationship between the reform of poor relief and the Protestant Reformation in early sixteenth-century Zurich. In the introduction she traces the various ways that poverty has been evaluated, and its social and religious connotations, up to the sixteenth century. After providing a portrait of sixteenth-century Zurich, the author goes on to explore the discussion of the poor in various media of the town: the sermons and pamphlets of Huldrych Zwingli, who was preaching that the poor were the true images of God; printed images depicting Christ calling beggars and other poor folk to Him (these appeared on title pages of Zwingli’s pamphlets); the language of legislation (in particular the poor ordinances of 1520 and 1525). By exploring each of these different “languages”–the words of Zwingli’s sermons, the visual images of title page prints, and the language of legislation–Professor Wandel restores the complex perception of the poor in Reformation Zurich. In each, the poor were located within matrices of religious and social values and were seen as both economically dependent and symbolic within larger theological and ethical constructs.

Selected Awards

• Visiting Professor, Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, 2020, 2023
• Linda and Stanley Sher Professor of History, 2017-present
• WARF Michael Baxandall Chair of History, 2016-present
• Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, 2012
• Dorothy and Hsin-Nung Yao Teaching Award, 2011
• Chadbourne Residential College Honored Instructor Award, 2008, 2009, 2011
• Kellett Mid-Career Award, University of Wisconsin, 2007
• Senior Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, 2004-2009
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2002
• Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, Fall 2002
• Vilas Associate, University of Wisconsin, 2000-2002
• Lilly Teaching Fellow, University of Wisconsin, 1999-2000
• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1997-98
• Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College, 1995

History Courses

• History 119 – Europe 1500-1815 – Syllabus 2024 (pdf)
• History 201 – The Historians Craft: Representing History: Monuments and Films – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
• History 201 – The Historians Craft: Visible History – Syllabus 2019 (pdf)
• History 201 – The Historians Craft: Witches and Saints – Syllabus 2014 (pdf)
• History 212 – The History of Western Christianity to 1750 – Syllabus 2018 (pdf)
• History 223/Religious Studies 234 – Genres of Western Religious Writing – Syllabus 2010 (pdf)
• History 223 – History of Western Christianity
• History 334 – The Reformation Europe
• History 600 – Witches and Saints
• History 600 – Inscribing the Americas – Syllabus 2010 (pdf)
• History 600 – Utopia: Fiction and History – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
• History 600 – Old Worlds and New Worlds – Syllabus 2012 (pdf)
• History 600 – History & Film – Syllabus 2024 (pdf)
• History 707 – Early Modern European History 1500-1789
• History 710 – Professional Development Seminar: Designing Courses – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
• History 891 – Pro-seminar in Modern European History