Kate Craig

Education

PhD, University of California Los Angeles

MA, University of California Los Angeles

BS, California Institute of Technology

About Me

Kate M. Craig received her Ph.D. and M.A. in History from the University of California Los Angeles and her B.S. in Applied Physics and History from the California Institute of Technology. She joined the history faculty at Auburn in 2015.

Her research interests include religion in the central Middle Ages, travel and mobility within the pre-modern world, and the application of natural scientific and digital techniques to medieval history.

Her first book, Mobile Saints: Relic Circulation, Devotion, and Conflict in the Central Middle Ages, examined the out-and-back movement of relics within northern France and Flanders from the tenth to twelfth century. This research was funded in part by a Fulbright fellowship (France, 2011), a Romani fellowship (UCLA), a grant from the Mellon Foundation, and a Lindsay Young Visiting Faculty Fellowship from the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

At Auburn, she regularly teaches world history courses for the Honors College as well as classes on medieval history and historical methods. Her classes generally include Reacting to the Past games and other forms of highly engaged experiential learning.

She was named Outstanding Faculty Member for the Auburn Honors College in 2018-19. She serves on the advisory board of the Journal of Tourism History and has served as the editor of Comitatus.

Prospective students interested in graduate study in medieval history at Auburn are strongly urged to contact her before applying.    

Research Interests

Medieval European history, religious history, history of travel and tourism

Publications

Books

• Mobile Saints: Relic Circulation, Devotion, and Conflict in the Central Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2021).

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Medieval Tourism," in Oxford Handbook of Travel and Tourism History, ed. Kevin James and Eric Zuelow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).
• "Between Fons and Foundation: Managing a French Holy Well in the Miracula Sancti Theoderici," in Sacred Waters: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells, ed. Celeste Ray (New York: Routledge, 2020), 187-193.
• “Fighting for Sacred Space: Relic Mobility and Conflict in Tenth- Eleventh-Century France,” Viator 48, no. 1 (Spring 2017), 17-37.
• “The Saint at the Gate: Giving Relics a ‘Royal Entry’ in Eleventh- to Twelfth-Century France,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz, ed. Yuen-Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodriguez (New York: Routledge, 2017), 121-133.

Courses Taught

• HIST 1010: World History I 
• HIST 1017: Honors World History I (Reacting to the Past)
• HIST 1027: Honors World History II (Reacting to the Past)
• HIST 3310: Europe in the Middle Ages
• HIST 3800: Historian's Craft
• HIST 3970: Special Topics - Medieval Travel and Travelers
• HIST 5970/6970: Special Topics - Medieval Christianities
• HIST 8710: Introduction to the Teaching of History