Virginia Burrus | |
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Nationality | American |
Occupations |
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Title | Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and Director of Graduate Studies |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Syracuse University |
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. [1]
Originally from Texas,Burrus attended Yale University where she gained a BA in Classical Civilization in 1981,before studying theology at the University of Göttingen,Germany (1981–1982). [1] [2] She then went on to gain an master's degree in 1984 in the History of Christianity from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley,CA. [1] Her dissertation was entitled Chastity as Autonomy:Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts. [3] She received her PhD in 1991 from the same institution. Her doctoral thesis was entitled The Making of a Heresy:Authority,Gender,and the Priscillianist Controversy. [4] Her PhD was supervised by Rebecca Lyman,Professor Emerita of History at University of California,Berkeley. [5] [6]
Burrus was professor of early church history at Drew University from 1991 to 2013 (assistant professor,1991–1996;associate professor,1996–2003;chair of the Graduate Division of Religion,2009–2013). [1] On joining Syracuse University as the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion,Burrus was the third person to be appointed to the position and succeeded Patricia Cox Miller,professor emerita at Syracuse University. [7] [8] Burrus was appointed director of graduate studies at Syracuse University in 2016. [9]
Burrus is a member of several academic societies,including the American Academy of Religion (1985–present) and the Society of Biblical Literature (1985–present),and has sat on steering committees for both associations. [10] She has been elected as a member of the American Theological Society (2002),the American Society of the Study of Religion (2005) and the International Association of Patristic Studies (2010). From 2009 to 2010 she served as the president of the North American Patristics Association,of which she remains a member. Burrus has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Early Christian Studies (2008–2014),and is the founding co-editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press Series Divinations:Rereading Late Ancient Religion (2001–present). [11]
Burrus specializes in the literary and cultural history of Christianity,and has a wide range of interests including gender,sexuality,orthodoxy and heresy,martyrdom,asceticism,hagiography and histories of theology within Late Antiquity. [1] Burrus engages with a variety of theoretical discourses within her work,including feminism and post-colonialism,applying and critiquing the approaches of 20th century philosophers and theorists such as Baudrillard,Cixous,Foucault and Irigaray. [12] Her 2004 publication The Sex Lives of the Saints has been translated into French,Italian and Czech. [1] Her doctoral students include Jennifer Barry and Peter Mena.
In April 2021,Burrus was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [13] [14]
Priscillian was a wealthy nobleman of Roman Hispania who promoted a strict form of Christian asceticism. He became bishop of Ávila in 380. Certain practices of his followers were denounced at the Council of Zaragoza in 380. Tensions between Priscillian and bishops opposed to his views continued,as well as political maneuvering by both sides. Around 385,Priscillian was charged with sorcery and executed by authority of the Emperor Maximus. The ascetic movement Priscillianism is named after him,and continued in Hispania and Gaul until the late 6th century. Tractates by Priscillian and close followers,which were thought lost,were discovered in 1885 and published in 1889.
Priscillianism was a Christian sect developed in the Roman province of Hispania in the 4th century by Priscillian. It is derived from the Gnostic doctrines taught by Marcus,an Egyptian from Memphis. Priscillianism was later considered a heresy by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Macrina the Younger was an early Christian consecrated virgin. Macrina was elder sister of Basil the Great,Gregory of Nyssa,Naucratius and Peter of Sebaste. Gregory of Nyssa wrote a work entitled Life of Macrina in which he describes her sanctity and asceticism throughout her life. Macrina lived a chaste and humble life,devoting her time to prayer and the spiritual education of her younger brother Peter.
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.
Porphyry of Tyre was a Neoplatonic philosopher born in Tyre,Roman Phoenicia during Roman rule. He edited and published the Enneads,the only collection of the work of Plotinus,his teacher.
Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the East,and sometimes in the West as well. In the East,major Greek Fathers like Basil,Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus were influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism,but also Stoicism often leading towards asceticism and harsh treatment of the body,for example stylite asceticism. In the West,St. Augustine of Hippo was influenced by the early Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry. Later on,in the East,the works of the Christian writer Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,who was influenced by later Neoplatonists such as Proclus and Damascius,became a critical work on which Greek church fathers based their theology,like Maximus believing it was an original work of Dionysius the Areopagite.
Lewis Ayres,a lay Catholic theologian,is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Between 2009 and 2013 he served as the inaugural holder of the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham.
Karla Pollmann is the President of the University of Tübingen in Germany,an office she has held since 1 October 2022. Previously she was the Dean of Arts at the University of Bristol,where she worked in both the department of Classics and Ancient History and the department of Religion and Theology. Her research covers Classical to Late Antiquity,patristics,the history of exegesis and hermeneutics,and the thought of Augustine of Hippo and its reception.
Edith Gillian Clark is a British historian,who is Professor Emerita of Ancient History at the University of Bristol. She retired from the University of Bristol in 2010. Clark is known for her work on the history,literature,and religion of late antiquity.
Marianne Sághy (1961–2018) was a Hungarian expert on the religious and social culture of Late Antiquity,with an especial focus on the cult of saints and hagiography. She was associate professor at the Department of Medieval Studies,Central European University,and at the Department of Medieval and Early Modern Universal History,Eötvös Loránd University,Budapest.
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.
Patricia Cox Miller is an American religion academic. She is the (Bishop) W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion at Syracuse University. She researches religious imagination in late antiquity,religion and aesthetics in late antiquity,early Christian asceticism,women and religion in late antiquity,early Christian and pagan hagiography and ancient art.
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.
Heidi Marx is a Professor of Religion at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg,Canada. Since July 2016,Marx has served as an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts. She is currently the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies,but has also filled two other portfolios.
Nicola Denzey Lewis is a Canadian academic of lived religion,early Christians,material culture of late antique Roman Empire,and women studies. She is a professor at Claremont Graduate University as the Margo L. Goldsmith Chair in Women's Studies in Religion.
Cornelia Bernadette Horn is a German-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.
Blossom Champlain is Professor of Intellectual History of Christianity at the MF Norwegian School of Theology,Religion and Society,in Oslo,Norway. Her research and writing focuses on how ancient and modern regimes of reading interact with the production of gendered and racial hierarchies.
Maureen Tilley (1948–2016) was Professor of Early Christian History in the Theology Department of Fordham University. She was an expert on Augustine of Hippo,martyrdom,women in late antiquity,scripture,and Donatism. She was known as one of the world's most accomplished scholars of Christianity in North Africa.
Jennifer Barry is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Classics,Philosophy,and Religion at the University of Mary Washington. She is an expert on late ancient studies,early Christianity,later Roman antiquity,and gender studies.
Margaret Ruth Miles is an American theologian and historian who was president of the American Academy of Religion in 1999 and dean of the Graduate Theological Union from 1996 to 2001. A 1982 Guggenheim Fellow,she has written and edited dozens of books,including Augustine on the Body (1979),Image as Insight (1985),Immaculate and Powerful (1985),Shaping New Vision:Gender and Values in American Culture (1987),Seeing and Believing:Religion and Values in the Movies (1997),Plotinus on Body and Beauty (1999),Carnal Knowing (2006),Desire and Delight (2006),and A Complex Delight (2008).
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