School of Arts&Sciences - University of Pennsylvania

Dr. E. Ann Matter
Associate Dean for Arts and Letters and Willliam R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Religious Studies

Ann Matter The associate dean for arts and letters is responsible to the dean for SAS humanities departments, consisting of Classical Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English, German, History, History of Art, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Romance Languages, Slavic Languages, and South Asia Studies. She works with the dean on priorities and long-term planning in these fields and with department chairs on matters of personnel, budget, space and facilities.

Dr. Matter's teaching and research encompass the history of Christian culture, the interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages, women in the Christian tradition, and textual studies. She is the author of The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity and several critical editions of medieval texts. She also co-edited Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance and The Liturgy of the Medieval Church. She joined the Penn faculty in 1976 after receiving her Ph.D. from Yale and her B.A. from Oberlin.