Blossom Stefaniw - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
My main research interests are texts and bodies, which I study in the context of masculinity and asceticism in early Christianity, especially late Roman Egypt.
Both interests are based on the desire to know how early Christian monks are doing their work, what they think that work consists of, why they think it is necessary, and which relationships, institutions, and discursive strategies are connected with the ascetic task.
I continue to work on textuality, education, and master-disciple relationships in 3rd to 5th century Christian asceticism, primarily in Egypt and Palestine. I have worked extensively on reading practices in Origen of Alexandria, Evagrius Ponticus, and Didymus the Blind. I am currently pursuing a book project which re-interprets the work of Didymus as recorded in the Tura Papyri, radically revising the received picture of Didymus. I am also working on the Teachings of Silvanus, a text which has not received very much attention in recent years but appears to have been highly influential on the writings of both Evagrius Ponticus and Antony the Great.
A new and increasingly intense interest is research into masculinity as a contested and volatile resource in the fourth century. This interest, closely entwined with the above, was behind my research on Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius Polemic against Origen. It is likewise behind current research into manhood in the Lausiac History of Palladius.
I am currently Junior Professor for Ethics in Antiquity and Christianity in Mainz (Germany) but trained primarily in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
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Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart)
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Papers by Blossom Stefaniw
Mind, Text, and Commentary
C. Kelly, R. Flower, M.S. Williams (edd.) Unclassical Traditions. Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity. (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Supplement 35.) Pp. viii + 162. Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 2011. Cased, £45, US$90. ISBN: 978-0-9...
The Classical Review, 2013
Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul by Hugo Lundhaug
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2014
Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius’s Polemic against Origen
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2013
The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity by Kim Haines-Eitzen
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2013
The Oblique Ethics of the Letters of Antony
L'identité à travers l'éthique, 2015
Epiphanius was a vociferous advocate of a totalized, univocal, and normative version of Christian... more Epiphanius was a vociferous advocate of a totalized, univocal, and normative version of Christianity. How does his agenda of defining and adjudicating the order of things unfold when applied to questions of reading and interpretation? His sexualized polemic against Origen and Origenist textuality shows that a debate that is ostensibly about hermeneutics mobilizes notions of shame and deviance in order to define legitimate imaginings of where truth is and what sort of meaning can be found in the Bible. The textualities of Epiphanius and Origen manifest fundamentally conflicting notions of how truth relates to the text of Scripture, to the physical world, and to bodies. For Origen, Scripture refers to an intelligible realm outside of time and beyond sense experience and the limits of embodied reason or the written word. For Epiphanius, however, the religious truth founded in Scripture can and should be connected to human bodies, and to the physical world. It is within range of common sense and plain language.
The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in s... more The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than the rest of society. The 'becoming male' motif can reasonably be expected, because of its oddity relative to modern views of gender and its distinctly late-antique roots, to help to reveal the relevant social and cultural assumptions about the relationship between gender and spiritual authority which lie behind its appearance in Apocryphal texts. These assumptions in turn explain why the motif is one of ambivalence rather than equality or neutralization.
“Didymus the Grammarian: The School of Didymus the Blind in the Light of the Tura Find,” in School and Monastery: Rethinking Monastic Education, ed. Samuel Rubenson and Lillian Larsen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. (at press)
Late ancient readers and writers functioned within diverse mimetic frames inherited from Plato an... more Late ancient readers and writers functioned within diverse mimetic frames inherited from Plato and Aristotle and elaborated within the flourishing of Christian paideia in the late Roman Empire. From Plato to Christian paideia, from the time of the articulation of the cosmic order which allows for mimesis until that order bodied forth a thicket of new genres and rampant religious imaginings in the fifth century, one thousand years passed and whole empires rose and fell. It is no coincidence that the ancient literature on mimesis stretches over such a long and varied period, for throughout antiquity, discussion of proper objects and modes of mimesis was a means of problematizing established social mores and motivating a new ethic, whether for all citizens or for the specially committed ethical athletes of the day. 1 Mimesis had a civic aspect from the start: Socrates' program for the more intellectually disciplined citizen was to be achieved by redirecting emotional and mental engagement to less derivative forms of mimesis, and the bishops Athanasius� (ca. 296-373 CE) or Chrysostom�s (ca. 347-407 CE) exhortation to the Christian laity to fix their attention on only the best saintly exemplars was likewise meant to enable an ethically sound Christian politeia. 2 In the span of time from Plato to Chrysostom, ethical thinkers also had to negotiate significant shifts in the terms of authority and the nature of the relation of empire to religion. Later Roman Christians started to write profusely, to engage their cultural and intellectual patrimony with a certain spiritual and political athleticism and, especially after the 1 Here I am thinking of individuals in the ancient world who made an extraordinary commitment to ethical self-development, whether through adherence to a philosophical life or conversion to asceticism.
“Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus and Monastic Instruction in Egypt,” in The Nag Hammadi Codices in the Context of Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 86. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. (at press)
“Evagrius and Authority” in Evagrius and His Legacy, ed. Robin Darling Young, and Joel Kalvesmaki, 96-127. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2016.
“Of Sojourners and Soldiers: Demonic Violence in the Letters of Antony and the Life of Antony,” in Violence, Education and Social Reproduction, vol. 3, ed. Kate Cooper, and Jamie Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. (at press)
Becoming Men, Staying Women: Gender Ambivalence in Christian Apocryphal Texts and Contexts
Feminist Theology, 2010
The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in s... more The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than
Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman …, 2012
“Evagrius Ponticus on Image and Material,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42.2 (2007): 125-135.
Revue de l'histoire des religions, 2007
“Spiritual Friendship and Bridal Mysticism in an Age of Affectivity,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2006): 65–78.
Mind, Text, and Commentary
C. Kelly, R. Flower, M.S. Williams (edd.) Unclassical Traditions. Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity. (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Supplement 35.) Pp. viii + 162. Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 2011. Cased, £45, US$90. ISBN: 978-0-9...
The Classical Review, 2013
Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul by Hugo Lundhaug
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2014
Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius’s Polemic against Origen
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2013
The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity by Kim Haines-Eitzen
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2013
The Oblique Ethics of the Letters of Antony
L'identité à travers l'éthique, 2015
Epiphanius was a vociferous advocate of a totalized, univocal, and normative version of Christian... more Epiphanius was a vociferous advocate of a totalized, univocal, and normative version of Christianity. How does his agenda of defining and adjudicating the order of things unfold when applied to questions of reading and interpretation? His sexualized polemic against Origen and Origenist textuality shows that a debate that is ostensibly about hermeneutics mobilizes notions of shame and deviance in order to define legitimate imaginings of where truth is and what sort of meaning can be found in the Bible. The textualities of Epiphanius and Origen manifest fundamentally conflicting notions of how truth relates to the text of Scripture, to the physical world, and to bodies. For Origen, Scripture refers to an intelligible realm outside of time and beyond sense experience and the limits of embodied reason or the written word. For Epiphanius, however, the religious truth founded in Scripture can and should be connected to human bodies, and to the physical world. It is within range of common sense and plain language.
The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in s... more The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than the rest of society. The 'becoming male' motif can reasonably be expected, because of its oddity relative to modern views of gender and its distinctly late-antique roots, to help to reveal the relevant social and cultural assumptions about the relationship between gender and spiritual authority which lie behind its appearance in Apocryphal texts. These assumptions in turn explain why the motif is one of ambivalence rather than equality or neutralization.
“Didymus the Grammarian: The School of Didymus the Blind in the Light of the Tura Find,” in School and Monastery: Rethinking Monastic Education, ed. Samuel Rubenson and Lillian Larsen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. (at press)
Late ancient readers and writers functioned within diverse mimetic frames inherited from Plato an... more Late ancient readers and writers functioned within diverse mimetic frames inherited from Plato and Aristotle and elaborated within the flourishing of Christian paideia in the late Roman Empire. From Plato to Christian paideia, from the time of the articulation of the cosmic order which allows for mimesis until that order bodied forth a thicket of new genres and rampant religious imaginings in the fifth century, one thousand years passed and whole empires rose and fell. It is no coincidence that the ancient literature on mimesis stretches over such a long and varied period, for throughout antiquity, discussion of proper objects and modes of mimesis was a means of problematizing established social mores and motivating a new ethic, whether for all citizens or for the specially committed ethical athletes of the day. 1 Mimesis had a civic aspect from the start: Socrates' program for the more intellectually disciplined citizen was to be achieved by redirecting emotional and mental engagement to less derivative forms of mimesis, and the bishops Athanasius� (ca. 296-373 CE) or Chrysostom�s (ca. 347-407 CE) exhortation to the Christian laity to fix their attention on only the best saintly exemplars was likewise meant to enable an ethically sound Christian politeia. 2 In the span of time from Plato to Chrysostom, ethical thinkers also had to negotiate significant shifts in the terms of authority and the nature of the relation of empire to religion. Later Roman Christians started to write profusely, to engage their cultural and intellectual patrimony with a certain spiritual and political athleticism and, especially after the 1 Here I am thinking of individuals in the ancient world who made an extraordinary commitment to ethical self-development, whether through adherence to a philosophical life or conversion to asceticism.
“Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus and Monastic Instruction in Egypt,” in The Nag Hammadi Codices in the Context of Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 86. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. (at press)
“Evagrius and Authority” in Evagrius and His Legacy, ed. Robin Darling Young, and Joel Kalvesmaki, 96-127. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2016.
“Of Sojourners and Soldiers: Demonic Violence in the Letters of Antony and the Life of Antony,” in Violence, Education and Social Reproduction, vol. 3, ed. Kate Cooper, and Jamie Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. (at press)
Becoming Men, Staying Women: Gender Ambivalence in Christian Apocryphal Texts and Contexts
Feminist Theology, 2010
The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in s... more The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than
Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman …, 2012
“Evagrius Ponticus on Image and Material,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42.2 (2007): 125-135.
Revue de l'histoire des religions, 2007
“Spiritual Friendship and Bridal Mysticism in an Age of Affectivity,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2006): 65–78.
Mind, Text, and Commentary: Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, and Evagrius Ponticus
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2011
EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN THE CONTEXT ^^MT)F ANTIQUITY Edited by David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacob... more EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN THE CONTEXT ^^MT)F ANTIQUITY Edited by David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Jörg Ulrich Blossom Stefaniw Mind, Text, and Commentary Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, and Evagrius Ponticus PETER LANG ...
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2012
Nicht wie die Heiden. Studien zur Grenze zwischen christlicher Gemeinde und paganer Gesellschaft in vorkonstantinischer Zeit. By Christine Mühlenkamp. (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum. Ergänzungsband, Kleine Reihe, 3.) Pp. viii+232. Münster: Aschendorff, 2008. €38. 978 3 402 10911 3
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2010