(B.A., Rochester; M.A., Ph.D. Duke) Curriculum Vitae 

*Note: Dr. Schott has been awarded an NEH Fellowship and will be on leave during the 2011-2012 academic year.  

οἶδα μὲν ὡς σχεδίῃσι μακρὸν πλόον ἐκπερόωμεν...(Gregory of Nazianzus Arc. 1.397a) 

                                                        (Kayaking on Keuka Lake)

                                                                     Areas of Teaching and Research Interest

                            - History of the Book and Literary Culture

                            - Literary Theory

                            - Christianity in Late Antiquity

                            - Neoplatonism

                            - New Testament

                            - Greco-Roman Religions in Late Antiquity

                                                                     Research Agenda

Late Antiquity (1^st-7^th centuries C.E.) was a period of both dramatic change, as a formerly persecuted Christianity became a new Roman state-sponsored tradition, and continuity, as classical traditions were adapted and transformed within this changing cultural and social milieu. My research agenda is aimed, broadly, at better understanding the religions of the late ancient Mediterranean in terms of the various social and political contexts in which they developed and to re-examine the place of religion in the intellectual and cultural transformations of the first through the seventh centuries C.E. This interdisciplinary research agenda combines my expertise in early Christianity and other religions of late antiquity with my facility in cognate areas such as ancient philosophy, classics, and literary theory to ask new questions of classic texts.

My recent and current work considers several interrelated topics:

1) The formation of religious, cultural, and ethnic identities in the late-Roman, early European, and Byzantine worlds

2) intersections of philosophical and religious discourses and the politics of imperialism

3) the history of intellectual culture and literary production.

                                                                        Books

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) 

                                                                      

Almost all that we know of the first three centuries of the history of Christianity is mediated through the anthologies of Eusebius of Caesarea. His Ecclesiastical History and Gospel Preparation preserve myriad fragments of otherwise-lost early Christian, Hellenistic-Jewish, and Greek literature, while his overarching narrative of orthodoxy’s triumph that runs throughout these anthologies continues to cast a long shadow on the study of late-ancient history. As the custodian of the Library of Caesarea, one of the most important in the ancient world, Eusebius also played a pivotal role in the preservation and transmission of Greek, Jewish, and early Christian literature for the medieval West and Byzantine East.  By attending to Eusebius as a reader and writer, my study reveals the extent to which Eusebius developed what may be termed new textualities—innovative ways of addressing the practice and theory of reading and writing, new ways of thinking and doing text. In addition to providing a long-needed reevaluation of Eusebius, therefore, this project contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of the history and theory of reading, writing, and literary culture.