| January 19: Why Early Christianity? How has early Christianity been studied, and why has it been particularly amenable to feminist critical history? Ancient Readings: Acts of Thecla in Miller, Women Modern Readings: Ross Shepard Kraemer, "Women and Gender," in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford, 2008), 465-92; Dale B. Martin, "Introduction" to The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies, ed. idem and Patricia Cox Miller (Duke, 2005), 1-21 |
| January 26: Women/Gender/History What is "feminist" about the study of women's history? How does gender change our approach to the history of women? Ancient Readings: "Martyrs" (#1-3) in Miller, Women, pp. 40-47 Modern Readings: Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" and "Women's History" from Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1998); Joan Wallach Scott, "Unanswered Questions," American Historical Review 113.5 (2008): 1422-30; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History (New York, 2007), xiii-xxxiv
February 2: Women/Gender/History/Religion |
| February 9: Recovering Early Christian Women, 1: Lives What approaches have historians used to recover the lived lives of early Christian women? What theoretical suppositions lie beneath those approaches? Ancient Readings: Acts of Andrew in Miller, Women, pp. 180-191; "Women and Domestic Life" (#2-7) in Miller, Women, pp. 256-276 Modern Readings: Virginia Burrus, "Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocrypal Acts," Semeia 38 (1986): 101-17; Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996), 95-128; Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge, 1996), 45-67 |
| February 16: Recovering Early Christian Women, 2: Voices How much value should we place on the recovery of actual women's (rare) voices in the study of early Christianity? What are the promises of pitfalls of such recovery? Ancient Readings: "Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas" in Clark, Women, pp. 97-106; Egeria, Itinerary in Clark, Women, pp. 186-97; Proba, Cento in Clark, Women, pp. 165-68 Modern Readings: Ross S. Kraemer and Shira L. Lander, "Perpetua and Felicitas," in Philip Esler, The Early Christian World (London, 2000), 1048-68; Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women (London, 2013), 105-30 |
| February 23: Foucault and Discipline How and why did the late theoretical works of Michel Foucault have such a dramatic impact on early Christian studies, especially in its more feminist approaches? Ancient Readings: "Major Treatises on Virginity" (#1-3) in Miller, Women, pp.78-117 and "Paradise Regained" in Clark, Women, pp.115-55 Modern Readings: Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 3: The Care of the Self (selections); Elizabeth A. Clark, "Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56 (1988): 619-41; Daniel Boyarin and Elizabeth Castelli, "Introduction: Foucault's The History of Sexuality: The Fourth Volume, or, A Field Left Fallow for Others to Till," Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001): 357-74; Burrus, Sex Lives, Introduction |
| March 1: Asceticism and Authority How (and why) can the rise of asceticism in early Christianity be read as a potentially feminist moment? Ancient Readings: "Women as Models and Mentors" in Clark, Women, pp. 204-58; "Women in Desert Asceticism" (#1, 3) in Miller, Women, pp. 236-238; 247-249 Modern Readings: Elizabeth Clark, "Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity," Anglican Theological Review 63 (1981): 240-57; Teresa Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, 1998), 222-53 |
| March 8: Modesty and Salvation What possibilities for women's agency can we infer from male prescriptions about women's bodies? What are the pitfalls of this agency? Ancient Readings: "Paradise Lost" in Clark, Women, pp.27-76; "Female Comportment" in Miller, Women, pp. 71-78 Modern Readings: Kate Wilkinson, Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2014), 1-57; Elizabeth Clark, "Devil's Gateway and Bride of Christ: Women in the Early Christian World," in Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith (Lewiston, 1986), 23-60 March 9: Book/Article Review due |
| March 15: NO CLASS (Spring Break) |
| March 22: Power/Authority Did Christianity create avenues to power and authority that didn't exist before? How do feminist narratives of "recovery" conflict with narratives of "representation" in the analysis of Christian women's power and authority? Ancient Readings: "Women's Roles in the Church" in Miller, Women, pp. 15-39, 47-68 Modern Readings: Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests (San Francisco, 1993), 9-50; Elizabeth Clark, "Patrons, not Priests: Gender and Power in Late Ancient Christianity," Gender & History 2 (1990): 253-74 |
| March 29: Heresies How did Christian deviance ("heresy") become feminized, and how did women become associated with Christian deviance? How do these feminized heresies and heretical women complicate the line between male rhetoric and "recovery" of possibly female styles of early Christianity? Ancient Readings: Jerome, Letter 133 in Clark, Women, pp. 161-162; Gospel of Mary; Epiphanius, "On Gnostics" Modern Readings: Virginia Burrus, "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome," Harvard Theological Review 84 (1991): 229-48; James Goehring, "Libertine of Liberated: Women in the So-called Libertine Gnostic Communities," in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. Karen King (Fortress, 1988), 329-44 |
| April 5: "Holy" "Women" To what extent have poststructural theorists since the 1990s made it politically, ethically, or historically difficult--or impossible--to "find" ancient Christian women? Ancient Readings: "Biographies of Ascetic Leaders" (#1-4) in Miller, Women, pp. 192-236 Modern Readings: Elizabeth Clark, "The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian After the Linguistic Turn," Church History 67 (1998): 1-31; Ross Shepard Kraemer, "Rethinking Gender, History, and Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman" from Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (Oxford, 2010); Burrus, Sex Lives, 53-90 |
| April 12: Queer Histories How have feminist historical tools and methods extended into broader critiques of gender systems and structures? What role can and do early Christian resources play in this more expansive, queered feminist historical endeavor? Ancient Readings: Life of Paul the Hermit; "Transvestism" in Miller, Women, pp. 150-51; Life of Pelagia and Life of Mary the Harlot from Ward, Harlots of the Desert Modern Readings: Burrus, Sex Lives, 19-52, 128-59 |
| April 19: AGORA Discussion of the 2009 film Agora focused on the popular media representation of women, gender, and religion in late antiquity: what modern (or postmodern) feminist desires are being captured, subverted, resisted, or upheld? Ancient Readings: online sources on the historical Hypatia Modern Readings: Alan Cameron, "Hypatia: Life, Death Works," in Wandering Poets and Other Essays (Oxford, 2016), 185-203 |
| April 26: Mary How does the Virgin Mary condense, represent, or problematize some of the larger issues surrounding feminist histories of early Christianity? Ancient Readings: "Female Imagery and Theology" in Miller, Women, pp. 289-321; Epiphanius, Panarion 78-79 Modern Readings: Stephen J. Shoemaker, "Rethinking the 'Gnostic Mary': Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala in Early Christian Tradition," Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 555-95; online images of Mary |
| May 3: Presentations Student presentations of final projects in progress |