Events, Conferences, and Retreats

ReMeDHe Article-in-Progress Workshop – June 2023 (virtual) 

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ReMeDHe’s article-in-progress workshop is an opportunity for authors to receive collegial and constructive feedback on a draft article from colleagues who work on similar topics, and an opportunity for participants to learn about up-and-coming research in the field! 

Session #1: Misa Nguyen

Session #2: Leonie Rau

Session #3: Laura Smith

Paper abstracts linked here

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ReMeDHe co-sponsored sessions – Society of Biblical Literature, November 2022 (Denver, Colorado)   

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S19- 126 Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World

Theme: Medical Knowledge and Practice

Lennart Lehmhaus, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, “Rabbinic Healing: Intertwining Religious and Medical Perspectives”

Susan Holman, Valparaiso University, “Rx for Mad Monks: Curative Hesychasm or Prison?”

Ilona Rashkow, Stony Brook University, “‘Ones Who Have Fallen Out’ (נֵ֫פֶל): Spontaneous, Accidental, and Intentional Miscarriage Laws in the Ancient Near East”

Joseph (Sang Wuk) Lee, Yale University, “To Eat or Not to Eat? A Re-proposal of the “Strong” and “Weak” in Romans 14:1–15:13”

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First Book Workshop – June 2022  (virtual)

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The workshop gives one or two early-career scholars the opportunity to receive feedback on their dissertation (or draft of their first book), as well as tips on publication, from senior and junior colleagues who work on similar topics, sources, and questions. The overall goal of the workshop is to strengthen emerging scholarship on health, healing, and medicine, as well as to support junior scholars working at this disciplinary intersection. This year’s workshop featured the project proposal of author Tara Mulder (University of British Columbia).

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ReMeDHe Standalone Conference – May 2021 (virtual)

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Session 1: Sexuality and Reproduction as Medical Topics for Early Christian Authors

Chris de Wet, University of South Africa, “Nemesius of Emesa on Pleasure, Desire, and Sex: A Case of the Medical Making of Christian Sexual Culture”

Candace Buckner, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, “On the Verge of Life and Death: Obstetric and Perinatal Anxiety in the Coptic Life of Aaron”

Brent Arehart, University of Cincinnati, “Medical Abstinence and Christian Celibacy in Late Antiquity: A Reevaluation”

Jonathan Zecher, Australian Catholic University, “Seminal Confessions: Sexual Dreams and Spiritual Diagnosis according to John Cassian”

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Session 2: Health and Healing in Patristic or Rabbinic Texts

Monika Amsler, University of Maryland, “Originality and Compliance in Talmudic Medical Recipes”

Naoki Kamimura, Tokyo Gakugei University, “Medical Imagery and the cura animarum in the Letters of Augustine”

Chance Bonar, Harvard University, “‘This is what physicians do’: John Chrysostom’s Homily against the Jews 8 as Response to Antiochene Jewish Health”

Dawn LaValle, Australian Catholic University, “No Cock for Asclepius: Healing in Plato’s Phaedo and Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection”

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Full Conference Schedule Linked here

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ReMeDHe Article-in-Progress Workshop – May 2021 (virtual) 

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ReMeDHe’s article-in-progress workshop is an opportunity for authors to receive collegial and constructive feedback on a draft article from colleagues who work on similar topics, and an opportunity for participants to learn about up-and-coming research in the field!

Session #1: Calloway Scott

Session #2: Isaac T. Soon & Anne Kreps

Session #3: Kirsty Jones & Candace Buckner

Paper abstracts linked here

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First Book Workshop – May 2020 (virtual)

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The workshop gives one or two early-career scholars the opportunity to receive feedback on their dissertation (or draft of their first book), as well as tips on publication, from senior and junior colleagues who work on similar topics, sources, and questions. The overall goal of the workshop is to strengthen emerging scholarship on health, healing, and medicine, as well as to support junior scholars working at this disciplinary intersection. This year’s workshop featured the project proposals of authors Shuli Shinnar (Columbia University) and Elisa Groff (University of London).

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ReMeDHe co-sponsored sessions – Society of Biblical Literature, November 2019 (San Diego) 

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Book Review Panel of Candida R. Moss, Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity.

Brenda Ihssen, Pacific Lutheran University, Presiding

Christoph Markschies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin, Panelist

Laura Zucconi, Stockton University, Panelist

Hector Avalos, Iowa State University, Panelist

Candida Moss, University of Birmingham, Panelist

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Paper Session: “Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds / Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World / Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity.”

Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, Liverpool Hope University, Presiding

Andrew M. Langford, University of Oregon, “‘They pierced themselves with many pains’: Pain Experience and the Rhetoric of Self-Harm in 1 Timothy”

Erin Galgay Walsh, Duke University, “Giving Voice to Pain: Poetic Representations of the Hemorrhaging Woman”

Jonathan L Zecher, Australian Catholic University, “Hermeneutics of Mental Pain and the Organization of Emotions in Late Antique Asceticism”

Helen Rhee, Westmont College, “Pain’s Sharability and Sociality in the Writings of Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine”

Lennart Lehmhaus, Freie Universität Berlin, “Talmudic Torment: Jewish Discourse on Pain and Suffering between Medicine and Martyrdom”

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Work-In-Progress Workshop: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World section

Julia Lillis, Union Theological Seminary, Presiding

Timothy Hyun, Faith International University and Seminary, “Job’s Dialogic Body and Disability”

Rebecca Raphael, Respondent

Christopher Stanley, Saint Bonaventure University, “Paul and Asklepios: The Greco-Roman Quest for Healing and the Mission of Paul”

John Penniman, Bucknell University, Respondent

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Paper Session: Healing and Disability in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East

Anna Rebecca Solevåg, VID Specialized University, Presiding

Ilona Rashkow SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook University, “Medicine in the Ancient Near East: “Magic” and Religious Healing (Asu, Ashipu, and God/gods)”

Kirsty Jones, Georgetown University, “Looking, Lusting, Loving: Samson’s Sight and Blindness”

Seonghyun Choi, Yale Divinity School, “The Language of Hearing and Seeing in 1 Samuel 1–3: Understanding Disability”

Mihi Yang, Sookmyung Womens University, “Comparison between Hezekiah’s and Ancient Syriac-Mesopotamian’s Healing”

LaToya M. Leary, Florida State University, “Disability, Masculinity, and Access in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Texts”

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Paper Session: Healthcare and Disability in Early Christianity

Chris de Wet, University of South Africa, Presiding

Tara Baldrick-Morrone, Florida State University, “Lost to the Bosom of the Church: Abortion as Differentiation and Slander in Ancient Christian Texts”

Jenn Strawbridge, University of Oxford, “The Missing Dimensions of Sightlessness in New Testament Studies”

Andrew Crislip, Virginia Commonwealth University, “Pain and Emotion in Early Christianity”

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ReMeDHe sponsored sessions –Oxford Patristics Conference, 2019 (Oxford)

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Paper Session: Ordering Knowledge and Modes of Knowing in Ascetic Theory and Practice.

Chair: Jonathan Zecher

Julien Delhez, “The Bible, the Monastic Fathers, and the Road towards Wisdom: Transmission and organisation of knowledge in Shenoute’s Canons”

Piwowarczyk Przemyslaw, “Modes of knowing among Coptic monks of Western Thebes”

Matthew Hale, “Meaning, Self-Transcendence, and Conversion in St. Maximus the Confessor’s Account of Theoria”

Eric Lopez, “Ascetic Knowledge and Anagogical Knowing in Maximus the Confessor”

Inbar Graiver, “The Late Antique Roots of Introspection: Producing and Ordering Psychological Knowledge in Monastic Communities”

Jonathan Zecher, “Byzantine Monastic Anthologies and the Organization of Tradition”

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Paper Session: Disability Discourse, Embodiment, and Healing: Intersecting Christian Antiquity and Modern Health Care, session 1

Chair: Susan Holman

Candace Buckner, “A Healing Vision: Elements of the Greco-Roman Miraculous Healing Tradition in the Coptic Life of Onnophrius”

Kylie Crabbe, “Disability, economic hardship, and mercy: The multilayered story of a father and his sons in the Acts of John”

Elisa Groff, “To Be, or Not to Be Sterile: that is a Question of Wellbeing in the Sixth Century AD”

Anna Rebecca Solevåg, “Medical Metaphors in Ignatius’ Letters”

Respondent: Andrew Crislip

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Paper Session: Disability Discourse, Embodiment, and Healing: Intersecting Christian Antiquity and Modern Health Care, session 2

Helen Rhee: Pain at the Intersection of Ancient Medicine and Early Christianity: Paradox of Agency and Insharability

Susan Holman: Shaping Water: Public Health and the ‘Medicine of Mortality’ in Late Antiquity

Chris de Wet: Medical Discourse, Identity Formation, and Otherness in Late Ancient Christianity

Respondent: Brenda Llewellyn-Ihssen

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First Book Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2018 (Chicago)

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The workshop gives one or two early-career scholars the opportunity to receive feedback on their dissertation (or draft of their first book), as well as tips on publication, from senior and junior colleagues who work on similar topics, sources, and questions. The overall goal of the workshop is to strengthen emerging scholarship on health, healing, and medicine, as well as to support junior scholars working at this disciplinary intersection. This year’s workshop featured the project proposal of Mark Anderson (Loyola Marymount University) and Stefan Hodges-Kluck (University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

Publishing Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2018 (Chicago) 

Chairs: Heidi Marx (University of Manitoba) and Wendy Mayer (Australian Lutheran College)

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ReMeDHe-sponsored panel discussion about the ins and outs of publishing on topics related to Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity. ReMeDHe assembled a panel of editors and representatives from various presses to answer pressing questions about the publishing process. The morning was divided between discussion of publishing in peer reviewed journals and book publishing, both in terms of monographs and edited collections.

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ReMeDHe sponsored sessions – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2018 (Chicago)

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Paper session I

Chair, Mark Anderson, California State University, San Bernardino

Candace Buckner-Double, “Blindness: Race, Disability, and Conversion in the Life of Aaron”

Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, “Marking the Martyr: A Tale of Two Stephens”

Myrick Shinall, “Basil’s Hospital and the Conflation of Poverty and Illness”

Shulamit Shinnar, “Leprosy, the Etiology of Illness, and Late Antique Rabbinic Public Health Practices: Discourse on Skin Afflictions in Leviticus Rabbah”

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Paper session II 

Chair: Chris De Wet, University of South Africa

Anne Kreps, “Who Knew Healthcare Could be so Complicated? Ancient Medicine and the Formation of Christian Heresy”

Helen Rhee, “Christian Paideia: The Therapeia for Greek Madness in Theodoret of Syrrhus”

Ulrich Volp, “Steps of Mourning and the Intelligence of Emotions: Observations on Fourth-Century Christian Funeral Orations”

Jessica Wright, “Animal Models for the Human Brain: Negotiating Comparative Anatomy in Arguments for Divine Providence”

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ReMeDHe sponsored sessions – Society of Biblical Literature, November 2017 (Boston)

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Book Review and Discussion of Moss and Baden’s Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness and Melcher, Parsons and Yong’s Disability and the Bible: a Commentary.

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Laura Zucconi, Stockton University, Presiding

Panelists: Hector Avalos (Iowa State University), Jeremy Schipper (Temple University), Candida Moss (University of Birmingham), Joel Baden (Yale University),  Anna Rebecca Solevåg (VID Specialized University), Noah Buchholz (Princeton Theological Seminary), David Watson (United Theological Seminary)

Research Collaboration: Dissertation Prospectus Round Table Discussion.

Julia Lillis, Duke University, Presiding

Candida Moss, University of Birmingham, Presiding

David A. Schones, Southern Methodist University, “Toward a Hermeneutic of Reproduction: 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10 from a Disability Social Scientific Perspective”

Laurel Taylor, Eden Theological Seminary, Respondent

Tara Baldrick-Morrone, Florida State University, “The Conception of the Past: Twentieth-Century American Reimaginings of Abortion in Antiquity”

Bernadette Brooten, Brandeis University, Respondent

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Session 20: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World.

Andrew Crislip, Virginia Commonwealth University, Presiding

Matthew D Niemi, Indiana University (Bloomington), “Touching the Tsinnor: New Images of David as Merciful Shofet”

Ilona Rashkow, Stony Brook University, “‘I Am the Lord Who Heals You’: Health and Healing in Ancient Israel”

Ken Holder, Brite Divinity, “The Surrogate Victim as Evidenced in Diseased Persons in the New Testament”

Andrew M. Langford, University of Chicago, “The Curious Case of the Cauterized Conscience: Pathology and Polemic in 1 Timothy”

Charles J. Schmidt, Rice University, “The Physiology of Salvation: The Use of Medical Theories in Simonian, Naassene, and Peratic Constructions of the Human Body”

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First Book Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2017 (Chicago)

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The workshop gives one or two early-career scholars the opportunity to receive feedback on their dissertation (or draft of their first book), as well as tips on publication, from senior and junior colleagues who work on similar topics, sources, and questions. The overall goal of the workshop is to strengthen emerging scholarship on health, healing, and medicine, as well as to support junior scholars working at this disciplinary intersection. This year’s workshop featured the project proposal of Jessica Wright (Princeton University) and Julia Kelto Lillis (Duke University).

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Pedagogy Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2017 (Chicago)

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Chairs: Jared Secord, Washington State University; Jessica Wright, University of Southern California; and Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College.

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ReMeDHe sponsored sessions – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2017 (Chicago)

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Session 6D: “Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity I: Intersections between Asceticism and Medicine in Late Ancient Christianity.”

Chair: Stefan Hodges-Kluck, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Jonathan Zecher, University of Houston, “‘Does medicine agree with the aims of piety?’: Toward a Re-evaluation of Ascetic Ambivalence to Medicine”

Elisa Groff, University of Exeter, “Out of Sight Out of Mind: Asceticism as Medical Treatment for Hypersexual Disorders in St Mary of Egypt”

Heidi Marx-Wolf / Heather Penner, University of Manitoba, “Suppurative Wounds and Necrotic Limbs: from Ancient Medical Discourse to Christian Hagiography”

Chris De Wet, University of South Africa, “God’s Askēsis: Medical and Cultural Discourses of Old Age in Early Christian Literature”

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Session 7D: “Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity II: Early Christian Psychagogy and Care of the Soul.”

Chair: Maria Doerfler, Yale University.

Wendy Mayer, Australian Lutheran College, University of Divinity, ““John Chrysostom, Neuroscience and the Jews”

Naoki Kamimura, Tokyo Gakugei University, “Tertullian’s Approach to Medicine and the Care of Souls”

Junghun Bae, Australian Catholic University, “Fear, Hope and Almsgiving: Revisiting John Chrysostom’s Approach to Redemptive Almsgiving”

Jessica Wright, University of Southern California, “The Brain is the Treasury of the Marrow: Medicine and Economy in Theodoret of Cyrrhus”

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Session 10E: “Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity III: Religion, Medicine, Health and Disability in Early Christianity.”

Chair: Mark Anderson, California State University, San Bernardino.

Ashley Edewaard, University of Notre Dame, “Combative Digestion and Clement of Alexandria’s Rationale for Moderate Eating”

Candace Buckner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Made in an Imperfect Image: Ethnicity, Disability, and Infirmity in the Life of Aphou”

Andrew Langford, University of Chicago Divinity School, “Cauterized Conscience: Medical Metaphor and Medical Practice in Historical Perspective”

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Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2016 (Chicago)

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“Religion and Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity”

Chairs: Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba, and Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College

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ReMeDHe sponsored sessions – North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting, May 2016 (Chicago) 

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Session 4E: “Religion and Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity, I.”

Chair: Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College.

Anna Rebecca Solevåg, Providence College, “Judas’ Deserving Disability”

Geoffery Smith, University of Texas at Austin, “Metaphor and Meaning in Tertullian’s Scorpiace”

Ashley Edewaard, University of Notre Dame, “The Faculties of Foods: Clement of Alexandria and Hippocrates’ On Affections”

Sarah Moravsik, The Catholic University of America, “Nutrition and Angelic Intervention in Medical Treatment: Origen’s Contra Celsum 8:24-32 and Philocalia 12”

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Session 6E: “Religion and Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity, II.”

Chair: Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba.

Jared Secord, University of Chicago, “The Celibate Athlete: Christian and Medical Perspectives on Abstinence from Sex in the Second and Third Centuries”

Marianne Djuth, Canisius College, “The Cure of the Body in Augustine’s Early Works”

Jessica Wright, Princeton University, “Preaching Phrenitis: The Medicalization of Religious Difference in Augustine’s Sermons”

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Session 7E: “Religion and Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity, III.”

Chair: Jessica Wright, Princeton University.

Niki Clements, Rice University, “Demons, Depression, and the Dangers of Naps: Depathologizing Akedia with John Cassian”

Thomas Arentzen, University of Oslo, “Deformed Bodies in Late Ancient Hymns”

John Penniman, Bucknell University, “St. Gregory and the Broken Bones: Eucharist as Bodily Remedy in the Catechetical Oration”

 

ReMeDHe sponsored sessions –Oxford Patristics Conference, 2015 (Oxford)

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Ellen Muehlberger, “Theological Anthropology and Medicine: Questions and Directions for Research”

Christoph Markschies, “Demons and Disease”

Jared Secord, “Galen and the Theodotians: Embryology and Adoptionism in the Christian Schools of Rome”

Róbert Somos, “Origen on the Kidneys”

Heidi Marx-Wolf, “The Good Physician: Imperial Doctors and Medical Professionalization in Late Antiquity”

Stefan Hodges-Kluck, “Religious Education and the Health of the Soul according to Basil of Caesarea and the Emperor Julian”

Jessica Wright, “John Chrysostom and the Rhetoric of Cerebral Vulnerability”

Helen Rhee, “Portrayal of Patients in Early Christian Writings”

Meghan Henning, “Metaphorical, Punitive, and Pedagogical Blindness in Hell”

Maria E. Doerfler, “The Sense of an Ending: Childhood Death and Parental Benefit in Late Ancient Rhetoric”

Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen “‘Waiting to see and know’ Disgust, Fear and Indifference in The Miracles of St. Artemios”

Caroline Musgrove “Debating Virginity in the late Alexandrian School of Medicine”

Michael Rosenberg, “Physical Virginity in the Protevangelium of James, the Mishnah, and Late Antique Syriac Poetry”

Julia Kelto Lillis “Who Opens the Womb? Fertility and Virginity in Patristic Texts”

Melanie Webb, “Testing Virginity in Augustine’s City of God”

Jennifer Collins-Elliott, “The Making and Unmaking of Virgins: Rape and Chastity in the Latin West of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries CE”

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Workshop – North American Patristics Society, Annual Meeting, May 2014 (Chicago)

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“Religion and Medicine, Health, Healing, Disease, and Disability in Late Antiquity”

Chairs: Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba, and Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College.

ReMeDHe sponsored sessions – North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting, May 2014 (Chicago) 

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Session 15: “The Role of Medicine and Health in the Making of Christian Subjects.”

Organizers: Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College, and Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba. Chair: Kristi Upson-Saia.

Phillip Webster, University of Pennsylvania, “Diagnose and Heal: The Sick Soul in Clement of Alexandria”

David Woodington, University of Notre Dame, “Healing the Empire: The Rhetoric of Disease in Maternus”

Allison Ralph, Catholic University of America, “Constantine and Coercion for the Health of Society”

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Session 44: “Medicalizing the Early Christian Body and Soul.”

Organizers: Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College, and Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba.

Chair: Maria Doerfler, Duke Divinity School.

Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba, “Porphyry and Galen on the Ensoulment of Embryos: Religion, Medicine, and Philosophy in Late Antiquity”

Wendy Mayer, Australian Catholic University, “Chrysostom’s Last Word on Treating the Soul”

Jessica Wright, Princeton University, “Mental and Affective Disorders in Fourth-Century Medicine and Theology”

Liza Anderson, Yale University, “Mysticism and Medicine in John of Apamea”

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Session 73: “Evaluating Physical Deformities, Illness, Suffering, and Death.”

Organizers: Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College, and Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba.

Chair: Scott Johnson, Dumbarton Oaks and Georgetown University.

Kayla Reish, Wheaton College, “‘The Lame Run into the Church’: Cyprian and Disabilities”

Peter Anthony Mena, Drew University, “Suffering Saintliness: The Ailing Body and the Desert Community”

Ellen Muehlberger, University of Michigan, “Learning to Die: Jacob of Sarug on the Experience of Death”