Workshop Participants 2013-2014
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (coordinator)
Rebecca is a Ph.D. candidate (5th year) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines the role of public ritual and cult life in the Christianization of Constantinople during the fourth and early fifth centuries C.E. Her broad research interests include religious diversity in Late Antiquity, strategies used in the promulgation of a normative Christian cultural identity, and the role of memory and topography in the creation of Christian landscapes.
Byron MacDougall
Byron is a Ph.D. Candidate (5th year) in the Department of Classics. His dissertation explores Gregory of Nazianzus' orations on Christian feast days within the larger tradition of Classical and Late Antique festival rhetoric. His wider research interests center around the cultural history of Late Antiquity and its reception of the Classical tradition, particularly philosophy, rhetoric, and literary theory.
Laura Dingeldein
Laura is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year; projected defense Spring 2014) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines Pauline moral progress and hierarchy. In addition to her study of the Pauline epistles and Hellenistic moral philosophy, Laura's broad research interests include issues of gender and sexuality in the Greco-Roman world (particularly in the canonical and non-canonical gospels), modern historiographical theory and methodology, the intersection between Neoplatonism and Christianity, and the late antique reception of Paul.
Scott DiGiulio
Scott is a Ph.D. Candidate (5th year) in the Department of Classics, writing a dissertation on the ancient miscellany in the context of the Second Sophistic. His research interests include Second Sophistic literary and intellectual culture; identity in the ancient world; Roman satire; and multilingualism and code-switching.
Sarah Craft
Sarah is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year; projected defense April 2014) at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Her dissertation project, entitled “Early Christian Pilgrimage Pragmatics: Travel Infrastructure, Movement, and Connectivity in Late Roman and Early Byzantine Anatolia,” explores notions of movement and connectivity throughout fourth through seventh century Anatolia. Within the framework of early Christian pilgrimage, Sarah takes a landscape archaeology approach to movement and connectivity through the lens of travel infrastructure.
Daniel Picus
Daniel is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Religious Studies. He is broadly interested in religion in Late Antiquity, specializing in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Though he focuses particularly in the Rabbinic period between Byzantine Palestine and the Sassanian Empire, his interests extend to Syriac, Greek, and Latin sources. Daniel intends to examine the structures of literacy and orality in the late ancient world, as both internal and external categories, and how they play out in the social histories of academies, schools, and systems of paideia in Late Antiquity.
Ian Randall
Ian is in his third year of the Ph.D. at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. His current research focuses on early medieval Cyprus, the transitions that occurred in material culture during the Arab-Byzantine Condominium and the Lusignan Dynasty, and the implications this may have for developing a more nuanced picture of the decision making processes that shaped group identity.
Daria Resh
Daria is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Classics. She is interested in rhetorical theory and literary circles in 10th century Constantinople, as well as reception of classical and medieval texts in modern Greek literature.
Dan Ruppel
"Reception" and "persistence" are the guiding terms in Dan’s work, which takes him across the fields of translation studies, archaeology, critical theory, and theatrical practice as he searches to elaborate the ways in which lived experience becomes story, and how history translates "back" into lived performance. He will be entering his third year as a PhD student in Brown's department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies this fall, and looks forward to presenting his Master's thesis, "Appropriate Bodies: The Implicated Reader in Tacitus' Annals" later this month.
Faculty Sponsors
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies
Stratis Papaioannou, Associate Professor of Classics
Rebecca is a Ph.D. candidate (5th year) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines the role of public ritual and cult life in the Christianization of Constantinople during the fourth and early fifth centuries C.E. Her broad research interests include religious diversity in Late Antiquity, strategies used in the promulgation of a normative Christian cultural identity, and the role of memory and topography in the creation of Christian landscapes.
Byron MacDougall
Byron is a Ph.D. Candidate (5th year) in the Department of Classics. His dissertation explores Gregory of Nazianzus' orations on Christian feast days within the larger tradition of Classical and Late Antique festival rhetoric. His wider research interests center around the cultural history of Late Antiquity and its reception of the Classical tradition, particularly philosophy, rhetoric, and literary theory.
Laura Dingeldein
Laura is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year; projected defense Spring 2014) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines Pauline moral progress and hierarchy. In addition to her study of the Pauline epistles and Hellenistic moral philosophy, Laura's broad research interests include issues of gender and sexuality in the Greco-Roman world (particularly in the canonical and non-canonical gospels), modern historiographical theory and methodology, the intersection between Neoplatonism and Christianity, and the late antique reception of Paul.
Scott DiGiulio
Scott is a Ph.D. Candidate (5th year) in the Department of Classics, writing a dissertation on the ancient miscellany in the context of the Second Sophistic. His research interests include Second Sophistic literary and intellectual culture; identity in the ancient world; Roman satire; and multilingualism and code-switching.
Sarah Craft
Sarah is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year; projected defense April 2014) at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Her dissertation project, entitled “Early Christian Pilgrimage Pragmatics: Travel Infrastructure, Movement, and Connectivity in Late Roman and Early Byzantine Anatolia,” explores notions of movement and connectivity throughout fourth through seventh century Anatolia. Within the framework of early Christian pilgrimage, Sarah takes a landscape archaeology approach to movement and connectivity through the lens of travel infrastructure.
Daniel Picus
Daniel is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Religious Studies. He is broadly interested in religion in Late Antiquity, specializing in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Though he focuses particularly in the Rabbinic period between Byzantine Palestine and the Sassanian Empire, his interests extend to Syriac, Greek, and Latin sources. Daniel intends to examine the structures of literacy and orality in the late ancient world, as both internal and external categories, and how they play out in the social histories of academies, schools, and systems of paideia in Late Antiquity.
Ian Randall
Ian is in his third year of the Ph.D. at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. His current research focuses on early medieval Cyprus, the transitions that occurred in material culture during the Arab-Byzantine Condominium and the Lusignan Dynasty, and the implications this may have for developing a more nuanced picture of the decision making processes that shaped group identity.
Daria Resh
Daria is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Classics. She is interested in rhetorical theory and literary circles in 10th century Constantinople, as well as reception of classical and medieval texts in modern Greek literature.
Dan Ruppel
"Reception" and "persistence" are the guiding terms in Dan’s work, which takes him across the fields of translation studies, archaeology, critical theory, and theatrical practice as he searches to elaborate the ways in which lived experience becomes story, and how history translates "back" into lived performance. He will be entering his third year as a PhD student in Brown's department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies this fall, and looks forward to presenting his Master's thesis, "Appropriate Bodies: The Implicated Reader in Tacitus' Annals" later this month.
Faculty Sponsors
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies
Stratis Papaioannou, Associate Professor of Classics