Overview
I have a dual specialization in the intellectual history of Christianity in the high Roman Empire and the social history of nonelites in Rome from the 2nd into late antiquity.
On the side of intellectual history, I research the manner in which nonelite textual producers in the Empire worked to reconcile opposing knowledge systems as they sought to develop and promote the religion that came to be known as Christianity. The second century was a time of rich intellectual experimentation as Christian writers incorporated Middle Platonism, Jewish midrash, Pythagoreanism, systems of astronomy and prognostication, traditional Roman and Greek modes of religiosity, and allegorical textual exegesis into new forms of Christian identity, forms that are often erroneously grouped together under the rubric “Gnosticism.”
On the side of social history, I’m fascinated by the everyday lives of ordinary people – subelites, nonelites, freedpeople, and enslaved persons. This interest has led me into nonliterary spaces of material culture and materiality studies, lived religion, the study of archaeology (including its reception in early modernity) and epigraphy. I am particularly interested in the city of Rome’s catacombs and mortuary spaces, which give researchers a rich, albeit complicated, data set that can provide insights into the manner in which ordinary individuals worked within the framework of Christianity, exercising some manner of individual agency in the way in which they chose to commemorate themselves and their loved ones.
Research Focus
My main research focus is on Christianization in the Roman Empire, particularly within non-elite populations and sub-elite textual producers. I also research ordinary or lived religion in Rome from the high Empire to late antiquity, funerary practices and the cult of the dead. My research also tends to include reception history and the crafting of Roman and late antique culture in the early modern and modern periods.
Awards and Honors
- 2024-2025: Loeb Classical Library Foundation Sabbatical Fellowship, Harvard University
- 2020: Fellow, Gilder Lehrman Center for Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
- 2016-2017: National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship
- 2016: Visiting Distinguished Lecturer, Max Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt
- 2015-2016: Fellowship for Associate Professors, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
- 2008, 2011: Visiting Scholar in Residence, American Academy in Rome
- 2008: Derek Bok Award for Teaching Excellence, Harvard University
- 2004-2005: Individual Research Grant, American Academy of Religion
- 2004-2005: Faculty Research Associate, Women's Studies in Religion Program, Harvard Divinity School
Publications
Books:
- The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021
- Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
- Introduction to “Gnosticism”: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Translated into Italian as I Manoscritti di Nag Hammadi. Una biblioteca gnostica del IV secolo. Trans. Matteo Grosso. Milan: Frecce, 2014.
- The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007
Edited Book:
- Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies in Honor of Elaine Pagels. With Lance Jenott, Philippa Townsend, and Eduard Iricinschi. Berlin: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
Selected Articles:
- “What if the Pliny/Trajan Correspondence is Not What We Think It Is?” (forthcoming: Journal of Early Christianity)
- “Guarding against Sexual Assault in Late Antique Egyptian ‘Magical Texts’: A Lived Religion Approach to Some Coptic ‘Magical’ Papyri." Religions of the Roman Empire (forthcoming)
- “Virgins in Late Antique Rome: The View from the Catacombs.” Journal of Late Antiquity, (forthcoming)
- “Of Dolls and Doubles: Thinking Through the Subjectification of Some Late Ancient Grave Goods.” Religions of the Roman Empire (forthcoming)
- “Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire: Principles of a New Approach.” Studies in Late Antiquity 5/1 (2021), 104-118.
- “Did Roman Jews Have Ritual?” Historia Religionum 10 (2018): 27-39.
- “Damasus and the Derelict Relics.” Early Medieval Europe 26/4 (2018): 417-39.
- “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Library.” (Co-authored with Justine Ariel Blount), Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 399-419.
- “‘Enslavement to Fate,’ ‘Cosmic Pessimism’ and other Explorations of the Late Roman Psyche: A Brief History of a Historiographical Trend.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Réligieuses 33 3/4 (2005): 277-99.
