The University of the South is pleased to announce that church historian Hannah Matis, Ph.D., will join the School of Theology as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Church History.
Dr. Matis will begin her duties at the start of the 2023-2024 academic year. Dr. Matis’s academic focus is in early medieval biblical interpretation and the church in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. She brings extensive administrative experience to her leadership role as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, in which she will also direct the Advanced Degree Program.
“I am delighted to be joining the faculty of the School of Theology. As someone who has worked for a decade in clergy formation for the Episcopal Church, I am deeply committed to residential seminary education and I look forward to the work I will do at Sewanee under Dean Turrell’s leadership,” said Dr. Matis.
Since 2014, Dr. Matis has taught a wide variety of subjects in church history at Virginia Theological Seminary including the history of spirituality, Anglicanism, the Episcopal Church, and the experience of women in Christianity. Her second and most recent book, The History of Women in Christianity to 1600 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), is built on her years of teaching and was written as a resource for both laypeople and seminarians. She is a graduate of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame and of the University of Durham in the U.K.
“I am thrilled that Dr. Matis will join our faculty in this leadership role,” said the Very Rev. Dr. James F. Turrell, Vice Provost and Dean of the School of Theology. “Dr. Matis is a first-rate scholar and experienced teacher with a wealth of administrative experience, who cares greatly about the formation of priests to serve God and God’s people.”
About the University of the South
The University of the South comprises a nationally recognized College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a School of Letters, and a distinguished School of Theology serving The Episcopal Church. Located on 13,000 acres atop the South Cumberland Plateau in Sewanee, Tennessee, the University enrolls 1,750 undergraduates and approximately 165 seminarians in master’s and doctoral programs annually. The University of the South is the only institute of higher education founded and governed by 27 dioceses of the Episcopal Church.
