Ruth Mazo Karras


Ruth Mazo Karras is an American historian of the Middle Ages whose interests are masculinity and sexuality in Christian and Jewish society during the Middle Ages. Her book Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages was named co-winner of the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History for 2012.
Since 2018, Ruth Mazo Karras has held an appointment as the Lecky Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin. She is the also the president of the Medieval Academy of America in 2019–20. In spring 2018, she was a visiting fellow at the St. Andrews Institute for Medieval Studies. Prior to taking up her post in Dublin, she served as Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She earned a PhD and an MPhil in History from Yale University, an MPhil in European Archaeology from the University of Oxford, and a BA in History from Yale.

Selected publications