12th Enoch Nangeroni Meeting:
“Constructions of Gender in Late Antiquity”
Online, 19-22 July 2021
Chairs: Kathy Ehrensperger (Abraham Geiger Kolleg) and Shayna Sheinfeld (Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, Sheffield University)
Secretaries: Joshua Scott (University of Michigan – Ann Arbor), Juni Hoppe (Abraham Geiger Kolleg/Potsdam University)
Following up on the Enoch Nangeroni Seminar on Gender and Second Temple Judaism (Rome, 2018), this seminar extends the research done in that earlier seminar in order to examine both the continuity and the shifts in the construction of gender as we move into the early 2nd–8th centuries. Our work together in this seminar emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary scholarly discussion across different time periods that are in many ways arbitrary and anachronistic. Participants in this seminar will utilize explicit methodology in their reconstruction of gender from the ancient textual and material sources in the areas of Judaism, Christianity, early Islam, and Roman religions.
For more information about the event, contact the event secretary, Joshua Scott (scottjos@umich.edu).
Monday, 19 July:
Opening Session: 9:00am-9:30am
Welcome, Kathy Ehrensperger and Shayna Sheinfeld
Greetings from Gabriele Boccaccini, Director of the Enoch Seminar
Session 1: 10:00am-12:00pm
Chair: Kathy Ehrensperger
Bernadette Brooten, “Genital Variation in Early Rabbinic Sources within the Cultural Context of Roman Law and of Ancient Astrology and Medicine” [PDF]
Maia Kotrosits, “Ethnographies of Gender, Ancient and Modern” [PDF]
Carly Daniel-Hughes, “Adornments of Empire: Feminine Subjectivity and Roman Colonial Life in Tertullian of Carthage” [PDF]
Discussant: Meredith Warren
Session 2: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Chair: Shayna Sheinfeld
Matthew Hotham, “Tying Knots of Fortitude to Withstand Your Beauty: Women as Temptresses and Tests of Fortitude in Early Sufi Biographies” [PDF]
Allison Kanner-Botan, “Making the Amicable Madman: Majnūn and Masculinity in Early Islam” [PDF]
Daniel Vorpahl, “Body as a Wonderland: Talking About Human Bodies as Constructions of Sex/Gender in Midrashic and Talmudic Literature” [PDF]
Discussant: Alexandra Hoffmann
Tuesday, 20 July:
Opening Session 9:00am-9:30am
Session 3: 10:00am-12:00pm
Chair: Kathy Ehrensperger
Sara Omar, “Gendering Sex in Islam” [PDF]
Ilaria Ramelli, “Constructions of Gender in Origen of Alexandria” [PDF]
Federico Dal Bo, “‘Incest’ in Qumran and Tannaitic Literature: A Halakhhic Struggle for Cultural Hegemony” [PDF]
Juni Hoppe, “The ‘disgraceful use of the male body in a female manner’: Lev 20:13 in 4th-century Roman legislation” [PDF]
Discussant: Al Baumgarten
Session 4: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Chair: Shayna Sheinfeld
Krista Dalton, “Torah, Masculinity, and Rabbinic Expertise” [PDF]
Lily Vuong, “Virginity, Marriage, and Ascetic Practices: Competing Models of the Ideal Feminine in the Acts of Thecla and Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena” [PDF]
Matthew R. Anderson, “One of the Boys: Jerome’s Fabulous Frontier Masculinity” [PDF]
Discussant: Jennifer Barry
Wednesday, 21 July
Opening Session 9:00am-9:30am
Session 5: 10:00am-12:00pm
Chair: Kathy Ehrensperger
Angela Standhartinger, “Eve’s Testament” [PDF]
David Zakarian, “Eve in Early Christian Armenian Tradition” [PDF]
Sara Parks, “Because of Her We All Die’: Employing Eve in the Second Temple Period and Late Antiquity” [PDF]
Discussant: Jillian Stinchcomb
Session 6: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Chair: Shayna Sheinfeld
Catherine Bronson, “The Islamic Eve in late–antiquity” [PDF]
Sarit Kattan Gribetz, “Queen Helena of Adiabene through the Centuries” [PDF]
Lavinia Cerioni, “The Feminine as an Intellectual Category in Gnosticism. Proposal of a Methodological Framework” [PDF]
Sari Fein, “For Rachel I Will Return the Israelites”: Maternal Grief and Loss in the Early Jewish Imagination” [PDF]
Discussant: Magdalena Díaz Araujo
Thursday, 22 July
Opening Session 9:00am-9:30am
Session 7: 10:00am-12:00pm
Chair: Kathy Ehrensperger
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “The Literary Construction of Gender: The Figure of Ifra Hormiz in the Babylonian Talmud” [PDF]
Alison Vacca, “Death at the Door of the Karapet: Gendered Access to the Miraculous in Late Antique Armenia” [PDF]
Andrew Higginbotham, “‘Shush Salome, your brother Shimon is speaking!’: A Peculiar Pattern of Palestinian Passivation” [PDF]
Catherine Bonesho, “Friend or Foe?: Cleopatra in Rabbinic Literature” [PDF]
Discussant: Erin Galgay Walsh
Closing Session: 1:00pm-3:00pm – Kathy Ehrensperger and Shayna Sheinfeld, others
- Matthew Anderson, Concordia University
- Magdalena Díaz Araujo, National University of La Rioja (Argentina)
- Jennifer Barry, University of Mary Washington
- Albert Baumgarten, Bar Ilan University
- Federico Dal Bo, University of Heidelberg
- Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
- Catherine Bonesho, University of California, Los Angeles
- Catherine Bronson, University of Notre Dame
- Bernadette Brooten, Bradeis University
- Lavinia Cerioni, Aarhus University
- Krista N. Dalton, Kenyon College
- Carly Daniel-Hughes, Concordia University
- Kathy Ehrensperger, Abraham Geiger Kolleg/ University of Potsdam (Chair)
- Sari Fein, Brandeis University
- Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Fordham University
- Andrew Higginbotham, Ivy Tech Community College – Lawrenceburg
- Alexandra Hoffmann, University of Chicago
- Juni Hoppe, Abraham Geiger Kolleg/ University of Potsdam
- Matthew Hotham, Ball State University
- Allison Kanner-Botan, University of Chicago Divinity School
- Maia Kotrosits, Denison University
- Sara Parks, University of Nottingham
- Sara Omar, Georgetown University
- Ilaria Ramelli, Durham University
- Joshua Scott, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (Secretary)
- Shayna Sheinfeld, Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield (Chair)
- Angela Standhartinger, Philipps-Universität Marburg
- Jillian Stinchcomb, Brandeis University
- Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
- Alison Vacca, University of Tennessee
- Daniel Vorpahl, University of Potsdam
- Lily Vuong, Central Washington University
- Erin Galgay Walsh, University of Chicago Divinity School
- Meredith Warren, University of Sheffield
- David Zakarian, University of Oxford
