Beth Allison Barr is the James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University where she teaches undergraduate courses on European women, medieval history, and world history, as well as graduate courses on women and religion in the medieval and early modern world, medieval sermons, medieval Britain, and feminist theory.

Barr received her B.A. in History (with a minor in Classics) from Baylor University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has served as the president of the Conference on Faith and History and president of the Texas Medieval Association as well as remaining an active member of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society, American Society of Church History, and Sixteenth Century Society.

She is the author of The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England, co-editor of The Acts of the Apostles: Four Centuries of Baptist Interpretation, co-editor of Faith and History: A Devotional, and—most recently—the author of the bestselling The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, as well as several scholarly articles on women and sermons. Dr. Barr writes regularly on The Anxious Bench, a religious history blog on Patheos, and has contributed to Religion News Service, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, Baptist News Global, etc. Her work has been featured by NPR and The New Yorker.

Since receiving tenure in the History department in 2014, Dr. Barr has served as Graduate Program Director in History (2016-2019), received a Centennial Professor Award (2018), received appointment as a Faculty-in-Residence for the LEAD Living and Learning Community in Allen/Dawson Residential Hall (where she has lived and served since 2018), and served as an Associate Dean in the Baylor Graduate School (2019-2022). She is also a Baptist pastor’s wife and mom of two great kids.