Conference "The Early Christian Book"

Catholic University of America 6-9 June 2002

 

Invited Speakers

 

Professor Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Gillian Clark, Professor of Ancient History, University of Bristol.

Dr. Kim Haines-Eitzen, Assistant Professor of Early Christianity, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University.

Dr. Caroline Humfress, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Law, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Samuel Lieu, Professor of Ancient History, Macquarie University, Australia.

Dr John Lowden, Courtauld Institute of Art, Reader in the History of Art in the University of London.

Dr. Claudia Rapp, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Mark Vessey, Holder of a Canada Research Chair in Christianity and Culture in the Department of English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

 

Papers subsequently published

 

Most of the papers presented were subsequently published in William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran (eds), The Early Christian Book, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007). The volume has since been reprinted in paperback. The following speakers are included:

 

John Lowden, "The Word Made Visible: the Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument"

Chrysi Kotsifou, "Books and Book Production in the Monastic Communities of Byzantine Egypt"

Daniel Boyarin, "Talmud and 'Fathers of the Church': Theologies and the Making of Books"

Catherine Burris, "The Syriac Book of Women: Text and Metatext"

Catherine M. Chin, "Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Jerome Inside the Book"

Gillian Clark, "City of Books: Augustine and the World as Text"

Caroline Humfress, "Judging by the Book: Christian Codices and Late Antique Legal Culture"

Daniel Sarefield, "The Symbolics of Book Burning: the Establishment of a Christian Ritual of Persecution"

Kim Haines-Eitzen, "Engendering Palimpsests: Reading the Textual Tradition of the Acts of Paul and Thecla"

Claudia Rapp, "Holy Texts, Holy Men, and Holy Scribes: Aspects of Scriptural Holiness in Late Antiquity"

Catherine Conybeare, "Sanctum, lector, percense volumen: Snakes, Readers, and the Whole Text in Prudentius's Hamartigenia"

Mark Vessey, "Theory, or the Dream of the Book (Mallarmé to Blanchot)"

 

The book also contained a short introduction by Philip Rousseau, "From Binding to Burning"