Susanna Elm | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | German |
Occupation | Historian |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Free University of Berlin, St Hilda's College, Oxford |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Institutions | University of California,Berkeley |
Susanna K. Elm (born November 11,1959) 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. [1] 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 . [2]
Susanna K. Elm is the daughter of historian Kaspar Elm. She graduated from the Gymnasium Leopoldinum in Detmold in 1978. Afterwards,she studied Classical Philology and History at Freie Universität Berlin. In 1986,she graduated from St Hilda's College,Oxford,where her doctoral thesis,The Organisation and Institutions of Female Asceticism in Fourth Century Cappadocia and Egypt,was supervised by classical historian,John F. Matthews. She then worked as an analyst at Morgan Guaranty Trust for a year before becoming assistant professor at the University of California,Berkeley in 1989. In 1994,she became an associate professor and has held a professorship at Berkeley since 2002. [3]
In 2007,Elm was part of a University of California research team that won the American Philological Association (APA) Prize for Scholarly Outreach for creating middle-school course materials on the fall of the Roman Empire. [4]
Her publications include Virgins of God:The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Clarendon,1994/1996);Medical Challenges for the New Millennium:An Interdisciplinary Task (Kluver,2001),co-edited with Stefan Willich;and Sons of Hellenism,Fathers of the Church (University of California,2012). She has received a Rhodes Scholarship as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1995),the National Endowment for the Humanities,and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. [5]
The book Virgins of God was a development of her doctoral thesis about female asceticism in early Christianity. [6] Enthusiastic religious women sought virtue by engaging in spiritual marriage or becoming anchoresses. Elm recounted how the religious hierarchy restrained such practises,condemning some of them as heresy. Doug Lee,writing in The Classical Review,praised the work as a "stimulating exposition which negotiates the complexities of the source material and subject matter with skill and assurance. ...one of the many strengths of the study is E's exploitation of little-known sources such as an anonymous treatise On Virginity (pp. 34–9 331–6) and Athanasius' Letter to the Virgins Who Went to Jerusalem (pp. 331–6)." [6]
Her book,Sons of Hellenism,Fathers of the Church was described by the Bryn Mawr Classical Review as 'a welcome and erudite study of Gregory of Nazianzus's intellectual engagement with the emperor Julian.' [7] In 2013,the APA awarded her the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit for the book. [8]
In a 2016 interview for Studies in Late Antiquity,a journal which she edits,she described her writing and research as 'an integrated approach that combines written sources from authors that are Christian and non-Christian with documentary and material sources.' [9]
Elm was elected a corresponding fellow of the British Academy in 2021. [10]
Elm is married to Tübingen jurist and European law expert Martin Nettesheim. [11]
Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory Nazianzen, was a 4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople and theologian. He is widely considered the most accomplished rhetorical stylist of the patristic age. As a classically trained orator and philosopher, he infused Hellenism into the early church, establishing the paradigm of Byzantine theologians and church officials.
Jovian was Roman emperor from June 363 to February 364. As part of the imperial bodyguard, he accompanied Emperor Julian on his campaign against the Sasanian Empire. Julian was killed in battle, and the exhausted and ill-provisioned army declared Jovian his successor. Unable to cross the Tigris, Jovian extricated his troops from enemy territory by making peace with the Sasanids on humiliating terms. He spent the rest of his eight-month reign traveling back to Constantinople. After his arrival at Edessa, Jovian was petitioned by bishops over doctrinal issues concerning Christianity. He died at Dadastana, never having reached the capital.
The Cappadocian Fathers, also traditionally known as the Three Cappadocians, are Basil the Great (330–379), who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389), who became Patriarch of Constantinople. The Cappadocia region, in modern-day Turkey, was an early site of Christian activity, with several missions by Paul in this region.
Aelia Pulcheria was an Eastern Roman empress who advised her brother emperor Theodosius II during his minority and then became wife to emperor Marcian from November 450 to her death in 453.
Erich Stephen Gruen is an American classicist and ancient historian. He was the Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught full-time from 1966 until 2008. He served as president of the American Philological Association in 1992.
Thecla was a saint of the early Christian Church, and a reported follower of Paul the Apostle. The earliest record of her life comes from the ancient apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla.
Helen King is a British classical scholar and advocate for the medical humanities. She is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University. She was previously Professor of the History of Classical Medicine and Head of the Department of Classics at the University of Reading.
Theophilos the Indian, also called "the Ethiopian", was an Aetian or Heteroousian bishop who fell alternately in and out of favor with the court of the Roman emperor Constantius II. He is mentioned in the encyclopedia Suda.
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.
Ellen Muehlberger is an American scholar of Christianity and late antiquity, Professor of History and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with appointments in Classical Studies and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
Barbara Elizabeth Goff is a Classics Professor at the University of Reading. She specialises in Greek tragedy and its reception; women in antiquity; postcolonial classics and reception of Greek political thought.
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli is an Italian-born historian, academic author, and university professor who specializes in ancient, late antique, and early mediaeval philosophy and theology.
Claudia Rapp FBA is a German scholar of the Byzantine Empire. She is currently Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna, a position she has held since 2011.
Jill Diana Harries is Professor Emerita in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. She is known for her work on late antiquity, particularly aspects of Roman legal culture and society.
Polymnia Athanassiadi is a historian specialising in the religious and cultural history of Late Antiquity, in particular the transition from Neoplatonic to Islamic theology. Athanassiadi was a Professor of Ancient History at the University of Athens.
Michele Renee Salzman is a distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. She is an expert on the religious and social history of late antiquity.
Emily Albu is a Professor of Classics at the University of California, Davis. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the field of classics and sits on several committees and boards. Her research focuses on the history of Christianity in late antiquity, and the Middle Ages. She is the author of a number of books, reviews, and articles.
Ann Marie Yasin is an Associate Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Southern California specializing in the architecture and material culture of the Roman and late antique world. She studies materiality, built-environments, landscapes, and urbanism as they pertain to the ancient and late ancient religious worlds.
Caroline Theresa Schroeder is professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is an expert on early Christianity.
Beth Severy-Hoven is Professor of the Classical Mediterranean and Middle East at Macalester College. She is an expert in Roman history and archaeology, and gender and sexuality in antiquity.