1. Correspondence Series

Professor Keefe kept up a rich correspondence with her professional and personal contacts throughout her career. In this collection we find her greeting and encouraging her colleagues, thanking people who invited her to give presentations or who themselves gave presentations to her classes, planning research trips in special collections at various European libraries, and graciously consulting on other scholars' research projects.

Letters in the collections below represent a selection from Dr. Keefe's correspondence. Additional letters, including letters addressed to Dr. Keefe, are in the physical archives at Duke Divinity Library, and may be made available upon request. All items within the Correspondence Series are in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 1-19.

Contents of the Series

1.1 California Institute of Technology (1981-1983)

At the close of her doctoral program at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Susan Keefe moved to Pasadena, California, for a two-year teaching contract at Caltech. The earliest notes in this collection are letters of thanks to her committee members after the successful defense of her dissertation in September of 1981. The collection ends with Dr. Keefe's fond farewells to her Caltech colleagues as she prepares to move to Davidson College in the summer of 1983. Physical copies of these letters and others that were not selected for digitization are in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 1-2.

1.2 Davidson College (1983-1987)

In 1983 Dr. Keefe secured her next academic position at Davidson College, a small school in Davidson, NC. While there, she continues to revise her dissertation for publication; she wins the Medieval Academy of America's prestigious Elliot Prize for her first published article; she petitions for funds to get faculty members their own personal computers, explaining the software programs that she has found useful in collating and comparing medieval manuscripts; she travels to Europe in 1985 to visit libraries and view manuscripts; and of course, she teaches classes on Medieval European History. Physical copies of these letters and others that were not selected for digitization are in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 3-5.

1.3 Harvard University (1987-1988)

Facing an uncertain job market, Dr. Keefe rejoices in a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard University for the academic year of 1987-88. She teaches in the Freshman Seminar Program, developing a seminar called "Ritual and Society in the Middle Ages." She also continues to work on revisions of her thesis and begins to explore possible publishers, though the pace of life at Harvard and her many responsibilities to the community ultimately keep her from finishing. Physical copies of these letters and others that were not selected for digitization are in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 6-7.

1.4 Duke Divinity School (1988-2012)

Dr. Keefe joined the Divinity School faculty in 1988. She worked in the historical division together with David Steinmetz in Reformation History and Theology and Richard Heitzenrater in Methodist and American Religious History. They would soon be joined by another historian in American religion, Grant Wacker, as well as an Early Church historian, first Lewis Ayres, and subsequently J. Warren Smith. Dr. Keefe earned tenure and finally saw her book Water and the Word in publication. She also developed a second book, another multi-volume set, on creed commentaries, which saw publication in 2012. At the Divinity School, she taught small seminars on the sacraments in the history of the church as well as the large survey course on church history from Jesus to the Reformation. She was known for sitting outside the room during her survey course's final exam with the class roster and praying for each student by name. Physical copies of these letters and others that were not selected for digitization are in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 8-15.

1.5 Correspondence with Students

Dr. Keefe was extremely fond of teaching and of her students. She kept copies of the recommendations she wrote for her students, and she stayed in contact with many of them and encouraged them or celebrated them as their lives and careers reached major milestones. The names of students mentioned in this collection are in the linked finding aid. The letters can be found, organized by students' last names, in the Keefe Collection, Box 1, Folders 16-19.