Religious Competition in Late Antiquity

Call For Papers: This year RCLA will host four sessions: 1. Gender, Power, and Competition: To continue 2023's conversation, we invite papers exploring the intersection of gender, power, and group competition in the ancient Mediterranean and southwest Asia through late antiquity. Topics might include discourses and practices of gender inclusion or exclusion, gender constructions, policing or contesting gender performances, rape culture, and related questions. We particularly encourage papers that engage in metacriticism and other critical reflections of scholarly approaches to these questions. 2. Competing over Antiquity: We invite proposals that focus on modern competitions over facets of religious antiquity (e.g., competing readings and methods of textual interpretation, the evocation of ancient objects, texts, or ideas in modern conflicts or modern competition over ancient artifacts), especially those addressing the methods, goals, and impact of these competitions on the reception and overall understanding of the ancient Mediterranean and southwest Asia. 3. An invited review panel, co-sponsored by Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World, reviewing Megan Nutzman’s Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Edinburgh, 2022). 4. Open Call: Our fourth session welcomes proposals on any topic related to religious competition in the ancient Mediterranean basin and late antique southwest Asia between and across all religious traditions, including explorations about religious competition in fictional, historical, and exegetical sources; material objects and art; imperial court contexts; cultural and religious landscapes; and reflections on method and theory. We are particularly keen to review proposals that focus on new approaches or methodologies to study religious competition in Late Antiquity, including Digital Humanities, for example social network analysis or digital text analysis.

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