The ‘Other’ and ‘Empire’ in Christianity: Postcolonial Readings of Late Antique Literature / International Workshop

Day 1 December 16

13.00 Sofia Puchkova (Leicester University/British Academy), The Postcolonial and Late Antiquity: Empire, Hybridity, and the Other. The Case of Theodoret of Cyrus and his Commentary on the Psalms

Session 1: Byzantine Empire: Centre and Frontiers
Chair: Karl Dahm (Durham University)

13:30  Thomas Girault (Ghent University), Ethnicizing Chalcedon: Heterodoxy and ethnic essentialization in the Caucasus

14:00 Silvio Roggo (Frankfurt University), “Othering” Christians with John of Ephesus

14:30 Radka Pallová (Princeton University), “Four Crucified Men on Each Gate”: Sanctifying the Mesopotamian Frontier under Justin I, 518-527

15.00 Coffee break/Afternoon tea

Session 2: New Arrivals to an Old Game
Chair: Jacob Lollar (Durham University)

15:30 Laura Locke Estes (Pepperdine University), Redrawing the Map: Mimicry and Polemics of Sameness in East Syrian Literature of the Early Islamic Period

16:00 Beena Butool (Nazareth University), “Of That Born from The Handmaiden”: Sebeos and the “Arab Other” in Late Antique Christian Writings on Islam and Muslims
ONLINE PAPER

Simon Pierre (Ifpo, Beyrouth/Orient et Méditerranée, Paris), From Foreigners to Bloodthirsty Pagans: The “Barbarization” of the Arabs in the Seventh Century Middle East

17.00 Coffee break

17.30-18.30 Keynote lecture: Prof. Marianne Moyaert (KU Leuven), The Politics of Difference: Religionization and the Making of the Religious Other in Early Christianity
Chair: Sofia Puchkova

18.30 Wine Reception

19.30 Conference Dinner

Day 2 December 17

Session 3: The Eastern Empires: Hybridity and Alterities
Chair: Prof. Alberto Rigolio (Durham University)

9:00 Marthe Becker (Bielefeld University), Jews, Heretics and Barbarians? Ethnographic Writing in the Ecclesiastical Histories

9:30 Maurits de Leeuw (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Fifth-century Palestine as a Christian Third Space

10:00 Anna Giaconia (Ghent University), The representation of the “other” in East-Syriac legal sources (5th-8th c.)

10.30 Coffee break/Elevenses

Session 4: A Look West
Chair: Prof. Francis Watson (Durham University)

11:00 Aidan Scully (Cambridge University), “To Lose Them Was a Gain:” The Battle of the River Frigidus in the Latin Histories of Rufinus and Orosius

11:30 Muxin Yan (KU Leuven), The Generative Other: Augustine’s Anti-Manichaean Preaching and the Making of Catholic Identity

12:00 Bjarke Christensen (Cambridge University), Religious Dissent and Rural Communities: The Case of Byzantine Numidia

12.30-12.45 Conclusions