Rate My Professor Jessica Lowe

Jessica Lowe is a Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Vanderbilt University, where she contributes to the Social Science curriculum through her expertise in early modern European history. She earned her Ph.D. in History from Vanderbilt University, an M.A. in Religion from Duke University, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from the College of William & Mary. Lowe's dissertation, advised by Dr. Joel Harrington, investigates how religious minorities, particularly Anabaptists and spiritualists, negotiated intertwined civic and spiritual expectations within reforming communities in German-speaking lands. This work highlights the decisions these groups made to integrate, assimilate, separate, or migrate amid changing religious landscapes. In 2017, she received a ten-month research grant from the DAAD to conduct archival research, supporting her focus on the lay experience of reform during the early modern period.

Prior to her current appointment at Vanderbilt, Lowe taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South for three years. Her research centers on the religious and cultural history of early modern Europe, with particular attention to the negotiation tactics of Anabaptist groups perceived as sexually deviant, heretical, and seditious. She has published a chapter, "Pragmatic Toleration of Anabaptists in the Electoral Palatinate, 1650–1664," in the edited volume New Directions in the Radical Reformation (Brill, 2023). Currently, she is expanding her dissertation into her first book project. At Vanderbilt, Lowe teaches courses such as the history of sex in American society and reproductive justice, with additional interests in early modern sexuality and gender, sex and the supernatural, and the early modern European witch trials. She has delivered public lectures, including a seminar on witches in history and film at the Belcourt Theatre, and presented papers at conferences like the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference.