Reading In and Out of Order in the Roman Mediterranean (SoFCB Junior Fellow Symposium)

Date: 11 November 2021
Time: 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. ET
Location: Zoom
Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography

Jeremiah Coogan (Oxford University), Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB), is hosting a panel discussion and workshop, “Reading In and Out of Order in the Roman Mediterranean.” This event will bring together scholars of classics, early Judaism, and early Christianity to explore what it meant to read “in order” in the Roman Mediterranean. 

Readers in the early centuries C.E. used a variety of conceptual strategies (e.g., pedagogy, sortilege, lectionaries) and material technologies (e.g., sectioning, tables of contents, cross-references) to orient encounters with written texts. These practices invite us to interrogate broader ideas of “order”—of language, of time, of cosmos, of society—that shaped textuality and knowledge in Mediterranean antiquity.

This event features talks by C. Mike Chin, associate professor of classics, University of California, Davis, on “Small Alive Things: Origen, Rufinus, Words, and Plants” and AnneMarie Luijendijk, professor of religion, Princeton University, on “Reading Christian Books In and Out of Context at Oxyrhynchus.” 

To facilitate a rich discussion, written materials will be pre-circulated to registered participants.

This event is free and open to the public, and everyone is invited to attend. To participate, register here.