Call for Posters 

Narrating Relationships in Holy Lives from the first millennium AD
Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Exeter via Zoom, 12^th July 2021

We are excited to announce an afternoon workshop on ‘Narrating Relationships in Holy Lives’. Communities wrote about holy figures for many reasons. Our speakers consider the characterisation of various holy figures or ‘the very special dead’ in texts from multiple religious (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Manichaean) and linguistic (Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew) communities. The workshop will explore the construction of holy and unholy characters, their relationships, and the role of narrative order in texts about holy figures. We are especially interested in how these features change as texts and figures are translated, transmitted, epitomised or received in different contexts across the late-ancient and early-medieval Mediterranean.

Keynotes: Christian Sahner (Oxford) “How to construct a holy life in the early Islamic period”

& Christa Gray (Reading) TBC

Speakers: Nic Baker-Brian (Cardiff) “Is there a Narrator Here? The Role of Narrative and Narration in Manichaean Kephalaia”; Stavroula Constantinou (Cyprus) “Narrating Friendship in Byzantine Hagiography”; Edmund Hayes (Leiden) TBC; Jillian Stinchcomb (Brandeis) “Narrating the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon’s Court in Late Antique Sources”; Chontel Syfox (Wisconsin-Madison) “Rewriting Leah: The Feminine Ideal in the Book of Jubilees”

The workshop will be held in English and will comprise a short opening and closing keynote, brief panels, and discussion. This will culminate in a roundtable discussion. General registration will be opened in late May.

More info, here.