Penny Schine Gold has been named to the Burkhardt Distinguished Chair in History at Knox College. The appointment was announced by Knox College President Teresa Amott, who also announced appointment of Professor Bruce Davis to the Burkhardt Distinguished Chair in Modern Languages.

"It gives me very great pleasure to announce that two of our faculty colleagues have been appointed to endowed professorships in recognition of their distinguished teaching, scholarship, and service to Knox College," Amott said.

A member of the Knox faculty since 1976, Gold is an expert in European history and religious history. She has published in numerous scholarly journals and produced two major monographs: The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France, published in 1985 by the University of Chicago Press; and Making the Bible Modern: Children's Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America, published in 2004 by Cornell University Press.

Gold also co-edited Cultural Visions: Essays in the History of Culture, a collection of essays published in 2000 in honor of Karl Joachim Weintraub, her undergraduate teacher at the University of Chicago and a Knox College trustee from 1978 to 1998. Her scholarly research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the American Academy of Religion, as well as an appointment as Senior Fellow, Institute of the Advanced Study of Religions, University of Chicago.

Gold has provided leadership for the College and for the professoriate in general in issues related to professional development, through her co-authorship in 2001 of The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career, and to the balance between family and profession, through contributions to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Survival/Success Guide for new Knox College faculty, and a contribution to the book, The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties While you Mentor, Nurture, Teach and Serve.

She has served Knox in many capacities, including as coordinator of Knox's faculty development program, chairing the History Department on three occasions, chairing the Gender and Women's Studies Program, co-chairing the Religious Studies Program and coordinating Knox's most recent Institutional Self Study for its re-accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission.

In 1988, Gold was the first recipient of the Sears-Roebuck Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, and she received the Caterpillar Foundation Faculty Achievement Award in 1999.

Gold earned her B.A. in history from the University of Chicago. She completed graduate work at Stanford University, where she received an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies.

The Burkhardt Distinguished Chair in History was established in 2010 through the generosity of Dr. Richard W. Burkhardt '39 and Dorothy Johnson Burkhardt '39. The Burkhardt Lectures in History and the Burkhardt Language Center also are named in their honor.

Both Burkhardts had long and distinguished careers in the academy. Dr. Burkhardt served on the faculties of Syracuse and Ball State Universities; he served as vice president and dean of the faculty at Ball State and retired in 1985. Mrs. Burkhardt served as instructor of French, Spanish and Russian, also at Ball State, from 1958 to 1983, and was awarded the Palmes Academiques by the French government for her efforts to promote cross-cultural learning between France and the United States. She was a member of the Board of Trustees at Knox from 1976 to 1990, when she was elected a life trustee. The Burkhardts reside in Muncie, Indiana.