Valerie Hotchkiss

Valerie Hotchkiss, who will and take up the position of University Librarian in the fall, will also have an association with the Religious Studies department. Valerie comes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she has served for over a decade as Director of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Professor Medieval Studies and Library Science. Previously, she was the Director of Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University and also had leadership positions at Austin Seminary and the Divinity School at Yale University. She earned her B.A. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati with study at the University of Tübingen. In addition to the MLS, she holds a PhD from Yale University in Medieval Studies.

Hotchkiss publishes in the areas of cultural history, religion, women’s studies, and the history of books and printing. Her books include: Clothes Make the Man: Female Transvestism in Medieval Europe (1996), English in Print from Caxton to Shakespeare to Milton (2008), and Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, a 4-volume work she co-authored with Jaroslav Pelikan (2003). Hotchkiss combines librarianship and scholarship as editor-in-chief of Women in Print, a peer-reviewed e-book series at the University of Illinois Press.