Course Syllabus

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Syllabus version 1.1

Instructor: Pamela Eisenbaum

Course Description

This course covers approximately the first five centuries of Christian history with a view toward understanding the role empire played in the rise of Christianity, both in terms of the confluence between Christianity and the Roman Empire as well as its role in the development of Christian beliefs, practices, discourse, institutions, and strategies of social control. The course is a kind of hybrid of historical studies, religious studies, and post-colonial critique. Thus the readings and discussions will include primary source texts, scholarship on the early history of Christianity in its Roman context, the nature and development of the Christian “religion,” and post-colonial analyses of various aspects of early Christianity.   The flow of the course combines the temporal and the thematic. That is to say that I have attempted to proceed through the term in advancing chronological order in general, but that each week addresses specific themes or issues, some of which extend beyond the primary time period for that week.

The course is designed as an upper level Masters (generally 2nd year and beyond)/PhD course in seminar format.  Iliff masters students should have had at least one course in biblical studies and/or history of Christianity, preferably two, prior to taking this course. If you have had previous relevant course work in biblical studies or the history of early Christianity at another institution or degree program, then you may well be ready to take this course right away, but I suggest checking with me if you are unsure whether you have adequate preparation.   

Overview and Objectives

  1. To develop some familiarity with Christian history of the first five centuries in terms of its religious, ecclesiastical, political and cultural dimensions.
  2. To encounter some primary sources of early Christianity
  3. To encounter recent scholarship on the rise of Christianity, so much of which has been influenced by the idea of “Empire” and post-colonial theory.
  4. To develop and explore post-colonial theory as it relates to our understanding the development of Christianity from a marginal Jewish sectarian movement to the dominant cultural, political and religious force in the West.
  5. To develop one’s own critical perspective on the subject and to put one’s skills to use in a paper focused on one particular issue.

Required Books

  • E. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (Columbia University, 2004) ISBN 978-0231129879
  • R. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Rise and Triumph of Christianity in the Roman World (WJK, 2004 (reprint)) ISBN 0-664-22772-4
  • R. Horsley, Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (TPI, 2004)   ISBN 978-1563384219
  • Andrew Jacobs, The Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and the Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Standford, 2003)   ISBN 978-0804747059
  • J. Schott, Christian Empire and the Making of Religion in Antiquity (Univ. of Penn., 2008)  ISBN 978-0812240924

Other Books that do NOT need to be purchased but from which readings are drawn and/or are recommended as relevant to the course:

  • Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins, 1993) ISBN 978-0801846328
  • Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Univ of Wisconsin, 1992) ISBN 0-299-13344-3
  • Brown, The Triumph of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity 200 – 1000 A.D. (Revised edition; Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) ISBN 978-1-118-30126-5
  • Denise K. Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton, 1999)
  • Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Univ. of California, 1991) ISBN 978-0520089235
  • Leela Gandhi, Post-Colonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (Columbia University Press, 1998) ISBN 978-0231112734
  • Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton, 2010) ISBN 978-0691146287
  • Richard Horsley (ed), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Trinity, 1997) ISBN 978-1563382178
  • Shelly Matthews, The Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford, 2010)
  • Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge, 2011) ISBN 978-1107644991
  • Ralph Martin Novak, Christianity and the Roman Empire: Background Texts (TPI, 2001) ISBN 978-1563383472
  • Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Vintage, 1994) ISBN 978-0679750543

 

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