Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes
Call For Papers: Our program unit is planning three sessions for the 2018 Annual Meeting. 1) Incarceration in Late Antiquity: This session invites papers that engage with late antique notions, discourses, and practices of incarceration and criminalization, including but not limited to: various types of prisons, ancient policing mechanisms, interactions between prisoners and disciplinary personnel, being a criminal or a prisoner in late antiquity, and also how discourses and practices of incarceration operate metaphorically and/or symbolically in late ancient culture and religion; 2) Syncretism: This session invites papers engaging with the concept of syncretism in antiquity, including but not limited to: looking at syncretism’s conceptual relevance, usefulness, and possible redescription within the study of late antiquity, case studies of ancient syncretistic formations and processes, and the intersections between syncretism and notions of, for example, geography, ethnicity, gender, and material culture; 3) “Not-So-Happy Endings”: The discipline of late antiquity is premised significantly on narratives of innovation or continuity – with the Roman Empire, with Judaism or Islam, with Greco-Roman philosophy and culture, etc. And yet late antiquity, much like any other era, was also a period of endings, including abrupt and infelicitous ones: theological compromises that failed, elaborate building projects that fell victim to invasion or natural disaster, political alliances that came to nought, or indeed other stories of failure and frustration, on the grandest or smallest scale. While these do not usually draw attention in their own right, this session invites contributions focusing specifically on engagement with such “not-happy endings.”
Program Unit Chairs
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