Ritual Boundaries is part of the Christianity in Late Antiquity Series.
By Joseph E. Sanzo, author of Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity
What do you do when you get sick? What do you do when you are afraid? The COVID-19 pandemic required man...
A cultural history of how Christianity was born from its martyrs.Though it promises eternal life, Christianity was forged in death. Christianity is built upon the legacies of the apostles and martyrs who chose to die rather than renounce the name of their lord. In this innovative cultu...
By Reyhan Durmaz, author of Stories between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond
We all tell stories to create meaning. A far-gone event in a distant time and place often works as a lens through which we remember the past, interpret...
By Julia Kelto Lillis, author of Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity
“Bodily” or “physical virginity” is one of the most used yet unclear phrases about virginity in academic and popular speech. Most who use it simply assume others know what they mean. F...
By Kyle Smith, author of Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity
Every October 31, when the pumpkins and black cats emerge, we hear that Halloween owes its origins to Samhain, the old Celtic harvest holiday when the veil separating the living and dead thins enough to be perme...
By Brian Catlos, co-author of The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650–1650
If Medieval Studies, as some say, has a “whiteness problem,” Mediterranean Studies does not. Recentering the narrative of the pre-Modern West on the region of the sea and the lands that surround it b...
By Michael Hollerich, author of Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers
As I was finishing work on my new book, Making Christian History, Christopher Beeley—who at the time was the editor of the Christianity in Late Antiquity series—commented that I had been prep...
This post is part of our Editor Spotlight Series.
For this year’s virtual American Historical Association conference, we connected with UC Press Premodern World History Senior Editor Eric Schmidt to talk about our program and what new projects he’s most excited about. Eric also shar...
By Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos, author of Constantinople: Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital
Ritualized occasions—holy days and holidays, funerals and weddings, graduations and retirements, conferences, protests, and elections—are crucial for co...
by Edward J. Watts, author of The Final Pagan Generation: Rome’s Unexpected Path to Christianity
In 392 AD, a Christian mob destroyed the Alexandrian temple of Serapis, the biggest and most impressive temple in the eastern Mediterranean. The six-hundred-year-old Serapeum complex ha...