Willemien Otten will deliver her inaugural Dorothy Grant Maclear Lecture, entitled "Double or Nothing: Creation and Gender in Eriugena, Hildegard, and Hadewijch."

Wednesday, March 30, 5 pm in Swift Lecture Hall. 

This lecture takes place with the Theology of Nature and the Nature of Theology Conference. The lecture and conference are free and open to all. 

Otten is the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity; also in the College; Associate Faculty in the Department of History, Social Sciences Division; and co-faculty director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Otten studies the history of Christianity and Christian thought with a focus on the medieval and the early Christian intellectual tradition, especially in the West, and an emphasis on the continuity of Platonic themes. She analyzes (early) medieval thought and theology as an amalgam of biblical, classical, and patristic influences which, woven together, constitute their own intellectual matrix. Within this matrix the place and role of nature and humanity interest her most. She has worked on the Carolingian thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena, on twelfth-century humanistic thinkers including Peter Abelard and, most recently, has ventured into the thought of R.W. Emerson and William James.