Director, Interdepartmental Program in Ancient History Professor, History
About
My work is focused on the history of Christianity in time period known as “late antiquity,” roughly 300 C.E. to 700 C.E., and I am particularly interested in the rhetorical and historiographical methods Christians adopted as Christian culture shifted from being in the minority to being dominant in the later Roman Empire. My current project examines the subjective experience of death as imagined by late ancient Christians.
I teach introductory undergraduate courses on Christianity, as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on Christianity in late antiquity, Gnosticism, asceticism, and theories of historiography. I also teach language courses for undergraduates and graduates in Greek, Coptic, and Syriac.
Selected Publications
"Perpetual Adjustment: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Entailments of Authenticity." Journal of Early Christian Studies 30 (2022): 313-342.
"Vast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa's The Six Days and the Tools of Knowledge." Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 25 (2022): 9-42.
Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“The Will of Others: Coercion, Captivity, and Choice in Late Antiquity.” Co-written with Mira Balberg. Studies in Late Antiquity 2.3 (2018): 294-315.
“The Legend of Arius’s Death: Imagination, Space, and Filth in Late Ancient Historiography.” Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 277 (2015): 3-29.
“Simeon and Other Women in Theodoret’s Religious History: Gender in the Representation of Late Ancient Christian Asceticism.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23 (2015): 583-606.
Angels in Late Ancient Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Affiliation(s)
Field(s) of Study
- Christianity in Late Antiquity
