Karma Lochrie completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees in 1979 and 1981 at Princeton University. She is a professor of medieval literature with an interest in gender and sexuality studies. Her current work focuses on theorizing and historicizing utopianism for the Middle Ages, in terms of a range of medieval discourses, including the philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism, the dream-vision trajectory extending from the Dream of Scipio and Macrobius, travel literature, and medieval geographical and cartographic traditions.
Lochrie co-edited a 2006 volume of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies devoted to a reconsideration of the study of utopianism in medieval and Renaissance studies. In addition to her work in the Department of English, Lochrie teaches courses in queer theory, and gender studies.