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Darleen Pryds
Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality and History Franciscan School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley |
Gracie and me in Blacksburg, Virginia, Fall 1996 |
Personal and Professional Interests: I'm a California native, having grown up in Oakland during the 60s and 70s. I left the Bay Area to go to college at the University of Southern California , where I majored in History. To this day, I remain a loyal Trojan fan. After a B.A. and M.A. at U.S.C, I earned a Ph.D. in medieval religious history with a minor in the history of science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. My first job after the Ph.D. was Assistant Director of the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies in Chicago. In 1996, I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains to teach Medieval and Renaissance History at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA . At the end of my first week in Blacksburg, a lost beagle wandered into my life. I named her Gracie, and she has made me laugh everyday ever since. In 2001 I returned to the Bay Area and started teaching at the Franciscan School of Theology , which is a member school of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In my spare time, I like to play tennis, take long walks with Gracie in the East Bay hills, read southern fiction, and take frequent trips to the central California coast. When I can't get away to the beach, I go to look at surfing photos |
My academic research interests focus on preaching by lay-men
and lay-women. To date, my
published work
has focused on Medieval cases of licit laypreachers,
ranging from a 14th-century king, whose preaching positioned
him as a sacral ruler, to a 13th-century adolescent female streetpreacher,
whose unlikely public oratory positioned her as an unusual spokesperson
for the papacy. My thesis students know that I draw many analogies for academic work from sports. Check out my favorite teams: USC Football Cal Women's Tennis Team Cal Men's Tennis Team My all-time favorite athlete is Steffi Graf . As a warning to my students, my least favorite teams are: Notre Dame Football University of Texas Football UCLA Football |
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