SLU Madrid lecture

Review of Ecumenical Studies, 2019

The purpose of this workshop is to give continuity to the dialogue among young researchers which we started in 2010 and 2014 with the 1st and 2nd Workshop of young researchers on Studies of Antiquity and the Middle Age. These were organized by the fellows and PhD-students of the Department of Ancient and Medieval Studies. Just as in the previous editions, for this workshop we propose a topic which allows researchers from various disciplines to participate. This year’s topic will address the contact among cultures and communities as a subject of studying the past. With this workshop we intend to foster the participation of young researchers of various disciplines in scientific meetings as well as to provide an environment of discussion in order to exchange knowledge of diverse areas of the research connected to the Study of Antiquity and the Middle Age. We consider it particularly interesting to focus on the contact among cultures and communities throughout history from an interdisciplinary view. In doing so, our aim is to achieve a meeting point where Classical Philology, History and Archaeology come together. We are aware of the fact that the afore-mentioned contacts must be considered as an on-going process that continues over the centuries, so that its beginning and end cannot be established with precise dates. That is why the structure of this workshop will not follow a diachronic chronological criterion. Instead, the workshop will be divided according to large thematic areas which shaped the social relationships and which will allow appreciating continuities and changes over the centuries, as well as comparing the various approaches that the communities put into practice under analogous circumstances. We are convinced that the contributions of each participant, following the aforementioned criteria, can yield significant input. In addition, their methodologies and their case-studies will provide new points of view for the approach to cultural contacts throughout history. We aim at resuming the essence of the previous workshops and at contributing to the conceptual and methodological renewal of the last years. At present, the old praxis of approaching the past from a unique discipline is obsolete and interdisciplinary work gathering the efforts of philologists, historians and archaeologists is clearly required. Therefore, the organization encourages all PhD-students from all the disciplines which work on the past to participate in the workshop.

Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), 2022

I presented my paper, "Becoming ‘Monsters’? Paul’s Use of Dehumanizing Terms as Boundary Markers in Philippians," on Nov 20, 2022 for the Greco-Roman Religions program unit at the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting in Denver CO. Grateful to the co-chairs (Drs. Barbette Stanley Spaeth [College of William and Mary] and Maria Doerfler [Yale University]) for giving me the opportunity to present my research. From the Program Unit CFP: "Description: This unit is highly interdisciplinary and comparative, a forum regularly bringing together historians of religion, specialists in Christian origins, classicists, archaeologists, and social scientists from across the world to pursue questions that foster new cooperative research initiatives. Call for papers: We invite papers for the following sessions: 1. Materiality and Religion in the Greco-Roman World: on the “material turn” in the study of religion, including studies of amulets, clothing and cosmetics, cult architecture, the protection of doorways, funerary artifacts and spaces, the arrangement of altars and votives, iconic books, etc., that discuss matters of efficacy, agency, assemblage, human/thing interaction, and discursive reflections on object-agency. Papers should be explicit in their understanding of “materiality of religions.” 2. Sex, Embodiment, and Cult Spaces in Greco-Roman Antiquity: on embodied religious experiences associated with cult spaces, including pilgrimage, devotional behaviors, ritual performances, sacred prostitution, therapeutic practices. We welcome papers mapping processes of religious continuities and discontinuities, individual or collective conversions, transformations and reconstructions of places and space. 3. Encountering Monsters: Religious Interactions with the Monstrous in Greco-Roman Antiquity: on interactions with monstrous beings in the literature and material culture of ancient Mediterranean religions. We welcome papers exploring the place and function of a wide range of human and non-human monstrous entities in myth, cultic rites, apotropaic contexts, processes of identity construction, including mutation from/into human form, and other phenomena of relevance for Greco-Roman religions. 4. Remodeling the Motel of the Mysteries: Innovations in the Study of Secret Cults (joint session with the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions): on recent innovations in the study of mystery religions, including analyses of soundscapes, affective impact, social identities, network analyses, digital reconstructions of sacred spaces, the descriptions of mystery rites by the Church Fathers, the intersections of mystery cult with magical practices, and distinctions between Greek and Roman mystery rites."

program and a book of abstracts , 2019

program and a book of abstracts of the THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ICONOGRAPHIC STUDIES. Rijeka, 30 - 31 May 2019

2011

Perhaps it is fully justified to think of Late Antiquity (3rd 7th centuries) as the first Renaissance of the Classical World. This period can be considered a fundamental landmark for the transmission of the Classical Legacy and the transition between the ancient and the medieval individual. During Late Antiquity the Classical Education or enkyklios paideia of Hellenism was linked definitively to the Judeo-Christian and Germanic elements that have modelled the Western World. The present volume combines diverse interests and methodologies with a single purpose unity and diversity, as a Neo-Platonic motto providing an overall picture of the new means of researching Late Antiquity. This collective endeavour, stemming from the 2009 1st International Congress on Late Antiquity in Segovia (Spain), focuses not only on the analysis of new materials and latest findings, but rather puts together different perspectives offering a scientific update and a dialogue between several disciplines. New Perspectives on Late Antiquity contains two main sections 1. Ancient History and Archaeology, and 2. Philosophy and Classical Studies including both overview papers and case studies. Among the contributors to this volume are some of the most relevant scholars in their fields, including P. Brown, J. Alvar, P. Barceló, C. Codoñer, F. Fronterotta, D. Gigli, F. Lisi and R. Sanz.

The Dumbarton Oaks Papers were founded in 1941 for the publication of articles relating to late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine civilization in the fields of art and architecture, history, archaeology, literature, theology, law, and the auxiliary disciplines. Articles should be submitted normally in English or French. Preference is given to articles of substantial length, but shorter notes will be considered if they relate to objects in the Dumbarton Oaks collections. Articles for submission should be prepared according to the submission guide, style guide, and list of abbreviations posted on the Dumbarton Oaks website, www.doaks.org/publications. Dumbarton Oaks Papers is published annually. Current and previous issues may be ordered online at http://www.hup.harvard.edu/. Standing orders may be placed by contacting customer service at 800-405-1619 or customer.care@triliteral.org. Volumes 1-59 of Dumbarton Oaks Papers are available in digital form through JSTOR; volumes 53-57 are also available at no charge through the Dumbarton Oaks website at

2020

This conference will be held online by the Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Society of the University of Edinburgh on November 19-20, 2020. The conference focuses on disasters (natural, "man-made" or “supernatural”) that shape historical memory and our understanding of the past, concentrating on the problematic relations between catastrophes and memory in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine societies. Keynote Speakers: Leslie Brubaker is Professor of Byzantine Art History, with particular interest in the cult of the Virgin, ‘iconoclasm’, the relationship between text and image, manuscripts, and gender. She is also Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, which is a unique research cluster with an international reputation, a thriving postgraduate community, and its own journal and two monograph series. Antoine Borrut is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He specializes in early Islamic history and historiography and is currently working on two projects: the first focuses on the much-neglected genre of astrological histories and on the role of court astrologers in historical writing in early Islam, the second concentrates on the construction of early Islamic sites of memory and its impact on the making of an agreed upon version of the early Islamic past.

The Classical Review, 2012