MI Working Group: "Ordering Knowledge in Poems and Homilies in Late Antique Religions"

We welcome you to attend the third meeting of the MI working group Ordering Knowledge in Poems and Homilies in Late Antique Religions. Led by professors Jeff Wickes, Hildegund Müller, and Alexis Torrance, the group focuses on how late antique and early medieval religious media, particularly poems and homilies, conceptualized and ordered the world.

In the course of six seminars this academic year, we will explore ways of conceptualizing what it means to know—to know God, self, others, and creation—in the classical and late antique world. Does knowledge mean grasping content? What do affect and emotion have to do with knowing? How can the sensorium—touching, tasting, smelling—order the world? Do these differing regimes of ordering map neatly onto different media and material culture (such as is preserved in magic bowls, baptistries, public statuary, and church-iconographic programs, among other examples)? Our working group will refract these questions through the specific genres of late antique poems and homilies in Latin, Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.

Working groups are envisioned as a collaborative environment where students can explore shared research interests. We hope to see you join the discussion!