Nation, Group and Religion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Princeton, April 16-18, 2009
The Group for the Study of Late Antiquity
East Pyne 010, Dickinson Hall 210 and 211
(workshop poster)


Thursday, April 16 (East Pyne 010)

4:30 pm: Opening lecture
Walter Pohl (University of Vienna)
Building a Christian World of Nations in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Friday, April 17 (Dickinson Hall 210)

9-10:30: Mountain Constantines
Moderator: Megan Williams (San Francisco State University)
Christina Maranci, (University of Milwaukee)
Art and Ambiguity at the Church of Zuart'noc'
Christopher Haas, (Villanova University)

Shifting Religious Adherence and Geo-Political Competition in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries: Vakhtang Gorgasali of Iberia and Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar of Himyar

11-12:30: Out of the West
Moderator: Shane Bjornlie, (Claremont Colleges, Los Angeles)
Catherine McKenna (Harvard University)
When Was Wales?
Angela Gleason, (Princeton University)
What Gall? – Naming Foreigners in Early Medieval Ireland

2:00-3:30 pm: Communities in Conflict
Moderator: Glen Bowersock (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
Hagith Sivan (University of Kansas)
Wherefore Do We Fast?" Dialectical Dating in Late Ancient Palestine
Volker Menze (Universität Münster)

Ecclesiastical Diptychs, Sacramental Communities and St. Paul: Non-Chalcedonian Religious Identities in the Sixth Century

4:00 pm: Community, Reciprocity and Boundaries
Moderator: Michael Maas, (Rice University)
Kate Cooper, (University of Manchester)
Truth, Blood, and Victory: Strategies of Distinction and Hypotheses of Belonging in the Fifth-century West
Stefan Esders, (Freie Universität Berlin)
Controlling Social Mobility and Adjusting Ethnicity: The Concept of 'advena' in the Early Medieval West
Helmut Reimitz, (Princeton University)

Saturday, April 18 (Dickinson Hall 211)

9-10:30: Out of Africa
Moderator: Patricia Crone (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
George Hatke (Princeton University)
Holy Land and Sacred History: A View from Early Ethiopia
Petra Sijpesteijn (Universiteit Leiden)
Becoming Egyptian: Culture and Ethnicity in Early Islamic Egypt

11-12:30: Romans in Retrospect
Moderator: Albrecht Diem, (University of Syracuse)
Maya Maskarinec (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Shifting Scripts of Romanness: Eutropius' Breviarium in Early Medieval Italy
Conrad Leyser (Worcester College, Oxford University)
The Making of Christian  Europe and the Memory of Pope Gregory the Great

12:30: Concluding Remarks: Peter Brown (Princeton University)

Sponsored by:
History Department, Princeton University
Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University
Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University
Department of Religion, Princeton University