Fall 2013

Presenters' papers will be circulated 7-10 days in advance.
Additional readings will be made available on Rebecca's carrel, Rock A33.
Friday, September 13
12:00-2:00 pm
Laura Dingeldein
"Gaining Christ through Virtue: Paul's Vision of Non-Jews' Moral Progress"
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Friday, September 27
12:00-2:00 pm
Daria Resh
"Rhetoric and Orality in the Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos"
Also read
  • J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford, 1962).
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Thursday, October 17
12:00-2:30 pm
Adam Becker, New York University
Read:
  • Nasser Abufarha, The Making of A Human Bomb: An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance (Durham, 2009), chapters 1 and 5.
  • Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, "Martyrdom as Piety: Mysticism and National Identity in Iran-Iraq War Poetry," Der Islam 87 (2012): 248-273.
  • Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca, 2005), chapter 4.
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Friday, October 25
12:00-2:00 pm
Scott DiGiulio
"Ordine rerum fortuito: Structure, Meaning, and Intratext in the Noctes Atticae"
Also read: 
  • Jason König, Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (Cambridge, 2012), chapters 1-3. 
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Friday, November 15
12:00-2:00 pm
Byron MacDougall
"Gregory's Prooemia and Festival Rhetoric: a first exercise in theoria"
Also read:
  • Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), introduction and chapter 1.
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Friday, December 13
12:00-2:00 pm
Rebecca Falcasantos
"Civic Cult Practice as a Technology of Identity Construction in Late Antique Constantinople"
Also read: 
  • Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford, 1992), chapters 5 and 9.
  • Amy Hollywood, "Performativity, Citationality, Ritualization," History of Religions 42.2 (Nov. 2002): 93-115.
 Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies

Spring 2014

Thursday, February 6
12:00-2:00 pm
Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
 Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Thursday, February 20
11:00 am-1:00 pm
Sarah Craft
"Saints in Text and in the Landscape"
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Thursday, March 6
12:00-2:00 pm
Daniel Picus
"Over These Things I Weep: Learning to Mourn in Lamentations Rabbah"
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Thursday, March 20
12:00-2:00 pm
Ophir Münz-Manor, Open University of Israel
"Liturgical Poetry and the Creation of Ritual Space in Late Antique Churches and Synagogues"
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies
Thursday, May 1
11:30 am-2:00 pm


5:30 pm
Ruth Webb, Université Lille 3
Graduate Student Workshop: "Fiction, Mimesis and Performance: Forms of Presence and Agency in Imperial and Late Antique Texts and Cultures."Also read: 
  • Plutarch, Life of Pericles.
  • Plutarch, How the Young Man Should Study Poetry.
  • Sextus Empericus, Against the Grammarians, "Whether the Historical Part is Feasible."
  • Theon, Progymnasmata (on reading, listening, and debating with ancient texts).
  • Selections from Plato, Republic (on mimesis in education).
  • John Chrysostom, Against the Games and Theater.
  • J.R. Morgan, "Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels," in C. Gill and T.P. Wiseman, eds., Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter, 1993).
Location: Seminar Room, Department of Religious Studies

"The Body of the Pantomime Dancer: Between Presence and Representation"
Public Lecture by Ruth Webb
Location: BERT 015 (formerly Hunter Laboratory), 85 Waterman Street
Sponsored by the Departments of Religious Studies and Classics
Last updated Monday, April 21, 2014