Theresa Gross-Diaz

About

Theresa Gross-Diaz (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1992; B.A., Northeastern Illinois, 1976) is an Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago.  She teaches courses on religious pilgrimages and crusades, medieval scholarship, the Vikings, and premodern Europe. Since 2003, she has served as Director or Co-Director of the Medieval Studies Program.

Gross-Diaz’s research has focused on Biblical commentaries in medieval Europe.  She is an expert on medieval interpretations of the Psalms and the author of The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: From Lectio Divina to the Lecture Room (E.J. Brill, 1996) and the forthcoming The Tradition of Latin Psalms Commentaries in the Latin Medieval West.

Gross-Diaz has played an integral role in the Medieval Studies Program for more than a decade.   Her recent collaboration with student interns to plan and plant the Medieval Gardens and Labyrinth on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus has served as a model of experiential learning and transformative education. In 2012, the Labyrinth was restored through repainting, herbal garden expanded.  Gross-Diaz is currently developing web content with student interns.

Gross-Diaz served on the Programs and Local Arrangements Committee for the 2009 Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. In 2004, she collaborated with the Art Institute of Chicago as Consultant for the Department of Ancient Art, cataloguing new Roman coins in the collection as well as advising for a coin exhibition. In 2003, Gross-Diaz developed as Consultant for the Department of Ancient Art the exhibition “The Centaur’s Smile” with the Art Institute of Chicago and the Princeton University Art Museum. She has also served as President of the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages.

Research Interests

Commentaries on the Bible, Schools and early universities, Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and to Rome, and religious indulgences

Courses Taught

HIST 101: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions to the 17^th Century

HIST 102: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions since the 17^th Century

HIST 303: The Pre-Industrial City in Europe

HIST 310: Formation of Medieval Europe, 300 – 1100

HIST 329: History of England to 1485

HIST 334: The Vikings

HIST 398: Internship—Medieval Garden at Loyola

HIST 414: Historiography of the High Middle Ages

HIST 523: Seminar on Pilgrimage and Crusade

HIST 523: Seminar on Indulgences and Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages

Selected Publications

The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: From Lectio Divina to the Lecture Room (Brill, 1996)

The Tradition of Latin Psalms Commentaries in the Latin Medieval West (Brill, forthcoming)

“The Latin Psalter,” in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (eds.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

"What's a Good Soldier to Do? Scholarship and Revelation in the Postills on the Psalms," in Lesley Smith and Philip Krey (eds.), Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Brill, 2000)

“From lectio divina to the Lecture Room: the Psalms Commentary of Gilberts of Poitiers,” in Nancy van Deusen (ed.) The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (SUNY, 1999)