Religious Competition in Late Antiquity

Call For Papers: For the 2023 Annual Meeting, the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity program unit will host four sessions: 1. Competitive Technologies of the Body (co-sponsored with Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism): The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new focus on the ways that people engage the individual and social body, particularly in fierce contestations about illness and proper techniques of care. We invite papers that engage competitive technologies of the body in antiquity, including, but not limited to, medicine, magic, diet, approaches to illness and disability, athleticism, and prosthesis. 2. Boundaries and Lived Religion (co-sponsored with Religious World of Late Antiquity): Discussions of communal boundaries in late antiquity often focus on the perspective of elite authors. We invite papers that look beyond this rhetoric to interrogate religious difference and competitive engagements through the perspective of lived religion and/or material culture. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, shared space, ritual, and dress. 3. Gender, Power, and Competition: We invite papers exploring the intersection of gender, power, and group competition in the ancient Near East through late antiquity. Topics might include discourses and practices of gender inclusion or exclusion, gender constructions, policing or contesting gender performances, rape culture, and related questions. Papers may focus on primary sources, but we also encourage papers that engage in metacriticism and other critical reflections of scholarly approaches to these questions. 4. Open Call: We invite proposals on competitive interactions between different social and religious groups in the ancient Mediterranean basin and late antique southwest Asia, and/or how this competition reshaped cultural and religious landscapes.

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