Susan Ashbrook Harvey | |
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Born | 1953 (age 70–71) |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2008) |
Academic background | |
Education |
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Thesis | Asceticism and Society: A Study in John of Ephesus' Lives of the Eastern Saints' (1982) |
Doctoral advisor | Sebastian Brock |
Academic work | |
Discipline |
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Institutions | Brown University |
Susan Ashbrook Harvey (born 1953) is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence and the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. She specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity,with Syriac studies as her particular focus. [2]
Harvey was born Susan Jean Ashbrook in 1953 in Rochester,New York to a Baptist seminary professor. [3] She cites her Christian upbringing as a source of inspiration for her research. [4] Harvey received her BA in Classics from Grinnell College in 1975. In 1977,she followed this with a Master of Letters in Byzantine Studies from the University of Birmingham and then a PhD at the same institution in 1982. [5] Her thesis was supervised by Sebastian Brock,one of the foremost experts in the Syriac language and a source of inspiration for Harvey's later interest in Syriac Christianity. [6] From 1983 to 1987,she was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Rochester. In 1987,she joined the faculty of Brown University.
Harvey's work focuses on the social aspects of Christianity,particularly issues affecting women. She has researched the variety of roles women played in the ancient church,and highlighted the many women saints emerging from all walks of life. According to Ross Shepard Kræmer,"Susan Harvey has almost single-handedly established an entire sub-field of studies on women and gender in the Syrian Orient". [7] Harvey has also published widely on topics relating to asceticism,hagiography,hymnography,homiletics,and piety in late antique Christianity. In recognition of this and other work,she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Grinnell College in 2007. [5] She was also awarded Doctor theologiæ,honoris causa ,from Lund University in May 2013 and Doctor theologiæ,honoris causa,from the University of Bern in December 2009. [8] In 2007–2008 she was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship to work on biblical women and women's choirs in Syriac Christianity. [9]
Ephrem the Syrian, also known as Saint Ephrem, Saint Ephraim, Ephrem of Edessa or Aprem of Nisibis, was a prominent Christian theologian and writer who is revered as one of the most notable hymnographers of Eastern Christianity. He was born in Nisibis, served as a deacon and later lived in Edessa.
John of Ephesus was a leader of the early Syriac Orthodox Church in the sixth century and one of the earliest and the most important historians to write in Syriac. John of Ephesus was a bishop, but John was more important than other bishops and what sets him apart from most others is the fact that he was a historian and a writer. He was also a political man and would often follow his own path. John was seen as a great writer and covered important aspects of events in history, and one of these important events was the plague, and John has one of the only first-hand accounts of the plague. He was also alive in what has been called the worst year in history, 536.
Jacob of Serugh, also called Mar Jacob, was one of the foremost Syriac poet-theologians, perhaps only second in stature to Ephrem the Syrian and equal to Narsai. Where his predecessor Ephrem is known as the 'Harp of the Holy Spirit', Jacob is the 'Flute of the Holy Spirit' in Antiochene Syriac Christianity. He is known primarily for his prodigious corpus of more than seven-hundred verse homilies, or mêmrê, of which only 225 have been edited and published.
Peter Robert Lamont Brown is an Irish historian. He is the Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is often regarded as the inventor of said field. His work has concerned, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe, and the relation between religion and society.
Saint Jacob of Nisibis, also known as Saint Jacob of Mygdonia, Saint Jacob the Great, and Saint James of Nisibis, was a hermit, a grazer and the Bishop of Nisibis until his death.
Syriac Christianity is a branch of Eastern Christianity of which formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expressed in the Classical Syriac language, a variation of the old Aramaic language. In a wider sense, the term can also refer to Aramaic Christianity in general, thus encompassing all Christian traditions that are based on liturgical uses of Aramaic language and its variations, both historical and modern.
The Members of the Covenant were a proto-monastic group in early Syriac Christianity. The first record of them is found in the fourth century.
The Doctor of Sacred Theology, also sometimes known as Professor of Sacred Theology, is the final theological degree in the pontifical university system of the Roman Catholic Church, being the ecclesiastical equivalent of the academic Doctor of Theology (ThD) degree.
Frederica Mathewes-Green is an American author and speaker, chiefly on topics related to Eastern Orthodox belief and practice.
Sebastian Paul Brock is a British scholar, university professor, and specialist in the field of academic studies of Classical Syriac language and Classical Syriac literature. His research also encompasses various aspects of cultural history of Syriac Christianity. He is generally acknowledged as one of the foremost academics in the field of Syriac studies, and one of the most prominent scholars in the wider field of Aramaic studies.
In Christian theology, the gender of the Holy Spirit has been the subject of some debate in recent times.
The Life of Saint Mary the Harlot is a hagiography which can be found in Book 1 of Rosweyde's Vitae Patrum.
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries, flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire.
Sidney H. Griffith is a professor of Early Christian Studies at the Catholic University of America. His main areas of interest are Arabic Christianity, Syriac monasticism, medieval Christian-Muslim encounters and ecumenical and interfaith dialogue.
Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.
Susanna K. Elm is a German historian and classicist. She is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History at the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include the history of the later Roman Empire, late Antiquity and early Christianity. She is Associate Editor of the journals Church History and Studies in Late Antiquity and is a member of the editorial board for Classical Antiquity.
Elizabeth Ann Clark was a professor of the John Carlisle Kilgo professorship of religion at Duke University. She was notable for her work in the field of Patristics, and the teaching of ancient Christianity in US higher education. Clark expanded the study of early Christianity and was a strong advocate for women, pioneering the application of modern theories such as feminist theory, social network theory, and literary criticism to ancient sources.
Zoora was a Syrian Miaphysite monk and stylite in the Roman Empire. He moved to Constantinople in the early 530s and was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 536. He died a few years later.
Caroline Theresa Schroeder is professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is an expert on early Christianity.
Cornelia Bernadette Horn is a German-US-American theologian, historian and philologist who specializes in the study of Early Christianity and pre-modern Christianity with a focus on Southwestern Asia and Northeastern Africa, also known as Oriental Christianity. Her work has examined theological, cultural, and historical questions in the areas of history, philology, art, childhood, women, and health in Early Christianity and specifically in the churches of Northeast Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. Her work has dealt with Christian Apocrypha and the transmission history of traditions across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, including the question of Christian apocryphal sources in the Quran and early Islam.