‘Pilgrimage’, pilgrimage, and writing historical fiction

“Pilgrimage”, pilgrimage, and writing historical fiction

Lecture by Lucy K. Pick

Given at the University of Chicago on October 29, 2014

Lucy K. Pick, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in the History of Christianity, on “Pilgrimage”, pilgrimage, and writing historical fiction. Lucy Pick is a historian of medieval religious thought and practice. Her current research and teaching interests include the relationships between gender and religion, connections between historical writing and theology, the development of monastic thought and practice, reading and writing as spiritual exercises, and the ways in which religion shapes lives through ritual. Her book Conflict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Thirteenth-Century Spain, discusses Jewish, Christian, and Muslim relations in thirteenth-century Toledo. Dr. Pick is currently working on a monograph studying the intersection of gender, politics, and religion in the Middle Ages by examining the careers of royal women in early medieval Spain. Her first novel, Pilgrimage, was published in the summer of 2014. It is a story about the Middle Ages that explores betrayal, friendship, illness, miracles, healing, and redemption on the road to Compostela. Dr. Pick discusses how she wrote and published a historical novel and the connection between academic writing and writing for a broader audience.

Learn more about the novel from this article in the University of Chicago Magazine.