This unit analyzes the competition between diverse social groups of the Mediterranean basin in the late antique Roman Empire (c. 200-600) and will organize two sessions in 2012.
For the first session we are accepting papers that examine how religious and philosophical groups in late antiquity competed with one another through material culture (i.e., via art, architecture, ritual objects, food, clothing, etc.). Participants are encouraged to demonstrate the ways that material objects can express competitive interactions both between and among Jews, Christians, and pagans in this period.
For the second session, we are accepting papers that problematize the notion of appropriation and its role in religious competition amongst Jews, Christians, and pagans.Competition requires the interaction of two or more religious or philosophical traditions. As is often the case when such groups are in constant contact with each other, it is inevitable that there would be some overlap in practices, beliefs, myths, etc. These intersections are often characterized in terms of “borrowing” or “appropriation,” with an implicit, or even explicit, negative judgment against whichever group is doing the appropriating, and often with the assumption that the newer or dominated groups appropriate from older or dominant groups. Such ascriptions have often been based on notions of cultural purity or, more recently, on notions of colonialism and resistance to colonial oppression. Papers should engage critically with matters of method and theory while analyzing a particular historical instance of cultural interpenetration.