The 2025 Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society will take place on May 22–24, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. The links to submit individual paper proposals and proposals for pre-arranged thematic sessions are now available and listed below.
The deadline to submit proposals is November 18, 2024. Notification of acceptance of all papers and session proposals will be made by December 15, 2024. (You’ll find a list of important dates at the bottom of this page.)
The meeting will include up to seven online sessions, which are intended to enable participation by NAPS members whose circumstances preclude them from attending large in-person meetings. Three thematic sessions with open calls for papers are planning to be online, leaving four more sessions for individual papers and possible pre-arranged thematic sessions.
- Individual Paper Proposals
Use the following link to propose a paper on any topic in patristics and/or early Christian studies: https://forms.gle/XGK9jVHKG5AhprgDA
You will be asked whether you wish to present your paper online or in person. You will need to provide a title, an abstract of 250–300 words, and 2–4 key words. Accepted papers will be organized into sessions by the program committee.
- Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers
The thematic sessions with open calls for papers are listed below with their organizers and descriptions. Use the following link to propose a paper for one of the thematic sessions: https://forms.gle/eZD7MqEnzj6oNDdi7
You will need to provide a title, an abstract of 250–300 words, and 2–4 key words. If your paper is not included in the thematic session, it will automatically be considered with the other individual paper proposals.
- Pre-Arranged Thematic Sessions
These sessions should be thematically consistent and will typically include three or four papers; they may include a respondent and/or time for discussion of all the papers. Use the following link to propose a pre-arranged session: https://forms.gle/KajJMguVA4Jy8KFi9
You will need to provide a title for the session, a rationale of 250–300 words, and 2–4 key words. Individual abstracts for each paper are not required. You must also submit the complete schedule of the session, listing the session chair, each presenter with the title of their paper, and the respondent (if any). The schedule must include the time in minutes allocated to each paper and to any respondent and/or discussion; the time must total 100 minutes. You will be asked whether you want your session to be online or in person, with the understanding that online slots are limited.
Guidelines for Paper Abstracts
Successful abstracts will (1) offer a clear indication of the thesis to be argued; (2) indicate which primary sources will be discussed; (3) indicate the relevant methodological, historiographical, and/or philosophical context; (4) incorporate sources (including archaeology and material culture) that fall within the parameters of patristics and/or early Christian studies.
Audio-Visual Capability
Proposals for in-person papers and sessions will indicate whether audio-visual capability is required to present visual evidence and, if so, why. Audio-visual capability is very expensive. We will accommodate all reasonable requests, but A/V should not be used simply to present textual material, including quotations, bullet points, bibliographic information, and the like.
Eligibility
All presenters at the meeting must be members of NAPS in good standing at the time of the meeting, and they must be registered for the meeting. Members should submit no more than one abstract. Each person may present only one paper at the meeting.
NAPS Outstanding Student Paper Prizes
Graduate student members of NAPS whose papers are accepted for the 2025 Annual Meeting are invited to apply for a $250 “NAPS Outstanding Student Paper Prize” by sending a complete text of their conference paper (no more than 2,500 words, not including footnotes/endnotes) to the Chair of the NAPS Board’s Awards and Prizes Committee, Andrew Jacobs (andrewjacobsphd@gmail.com), by March 1, 2025. Up to five prizes will be given, and the winners will be announced at the 2025 NAPS Business Meeting.
Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers: In-Person Sessions
Comedy, Satire, and Humor in Late Antique Polemic
Organizer: Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (rstephensfalcasantos@amherst.edu)
Late antique authors frequently rely on humor to entertain and to maintain the interest of their audiences. Amusing tales, descriptive excurses, and other “funny” textual moments appear in histories, heresiology, apologetics, hagiography, and other genres. Oftentimes these episodes involve humor in some way. A martyr talks back to his persecutors as he is roasted on a grill. A monk makes a caustic jab that undercuts a bishop’s claim to authority. One bishop twists another bishop’s comment into a joke.
This session seeks to examine how humor functions within late antique polemic. While a number of studies in the past two decades have examined humor in antiquity (e.g., Plaza 2006; Griffith and Marks 2007; Beard 2014; Kidd 2014), these studies tend to focus on identifying what counted as humor and how it appears on the classical stage and in epic and the literature of the Second Sophistic. But the use of these elements in late antique texts–particularly polemic–has received less attention. Why do late antique polemicists include comedic situations? Does satire offer him a particular edge in argumentation? What is missed when the humor of an altercation is misrecognized? To answer these questions, we invite papers that critically engage and analyze the appearance of comedy, satire, and other forms of humor in various genres of polemic, including heresiology, homiletics, historiography, philosophy, and hymnography, as well as papers that reexamine interactions that are not usually through these lenses and open new possibilities for analyzing the narrative.
Considering the Birds of the Air: Birds and Avian Imagery in Early Christian and Patristic Thought
Organizer: Daniel Edwards (daniel.w.edwards@marquette.edu)
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus urges his audience to “consider the birds of the air” (Matt 6:26). It is perhaps no surprise, then, that later Christians—whether poets or preachers, artists or philosophers—did just that. Homilists like Basil, Ambrose, and the author of the Macarian corpus found birds to be helpful parenetic examples. Poets like Prudentius and Ephrem saw birds as poetic allegories. Meanwhile, the earliest Christian iconography is replete with symbolic doves, peacocks, pelicans, and other birds, giving concrete representation to metaphors found throughout ancient philosophical and theological literature. While scholars have addressed various instances of avian imagery, there remains considerable space for sustained reflection on the topic of birds in Early and late antique Christianity. Consequently, this session invites papers exploring this theme within Late Antiquity and the ways it provides insight into the variety of early Christian engagements with the non-human world.
Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): • Patristic biblical exegesis and birds • Avian imagery in poetry • Birds and paraenesis in homiletic works • Reception of the philosophical metaphor of “wings” in patristic thought • Precursors to medieval bestiary literature in Late Antiquity • Reception of birds and their representation from ancient natural histories in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity • Depictions of birds in art or other materials (e.g., manuscripts) • Relations between the (avian) non-human and human in Early Christianity/Late Antiquity • Birds and avian imagery in hagiographic literature • Reception of Classical philosophical reflection on and classification of birds in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity
Digital Humanities Committee’s Practicalities Session: Tutorials in Workflows, Front-end Software, and Efficient Digital Scholarship
Organizer: Corey Stephan (corey.stephan@stthom.edu)
A given historical scholar’s digital research and writing workflow is likely to be hyper-individualized while devised haphazardly rather than via intentional planning. Thoughtfully planning one’s digital workflow, however, allows one to achieve heightened efficiency — often with a significant gain in overall productivity. This session will be a space in which patrologists with special digital workflows share their finest tips in the form of brief, self-contained tutorials. Our tutorials will be equivalent to what are often called “Lightning Talks” at computer science and information technology conferences. Proposals for “Lightning Talks” may pertain to operating system setup, desktop environment organization, graphical software application usage, shell scripting, citation management, terminal commands, papyrus or manuscript manipulation, document typing or editing, digital reading, or anything else that has to do with configuring an orderly and efficient patristic scholarship digital workflow. While each tutorial should touch upon a topic that is likely to challenge fellow NAPS members, preference will be given to topics that both carry potential for utility across a diverse array of NAPS membership and pertain to (accessible) free and open-source software and/or open access academic materials. Each accepted speaker should prepare an educational tutorial or showcase to be delivered in-person and followed by practical audience questioning. If you might have something about computer efficiency in patrology that you suspect to be worth sharing with colleagues, we welcome your proposal for this session at NAPS 2025.
Mapping Early Christianity from the Margins
Organizer: Jonathan Zecher (jonathan.zecher@gmail.com)
Early Christian studies chart not only the courses of dominant orthodoxies and orthopraxis in Late Antiquity, but the subaltern itineraries of resistant ideas, people, and communities. Yet, while questioning dominant narratives, we still find “centres”—other stable points, famous names especially, from which to map the territory. What if we move deliberately to the margin, to those texts whose authors are only a name, or even to those that exist only in the wake of other peoples’ writings? What if we privilege the material as opposed to the literary, and attend to those often fragmentary and ambiguous traces of lived practice? What happens, in effect, if we turn from centres to their margins? Ideas were often worked out, not in the treatises of “great men,” but in the compilations, pastiches, scholia, and fragments, of barely known individuals. They were inscribed in stone and papyrus, in church buildings and monastic cells, in eulogia, and clothing. In these a more dynamic, fluid, and open picture of early Christianity emerges.
This session seeks papers exploring those margins, whether materially or metaphorically. We invite papers on 1. compilatory and anonymous literature, catenae, florilegia, and other so-called “minor genres” of theological literature; 2. marginalia, apparatuses, and material reminders of reading and engaging with texts; and 3. material culture, including architecture, epigraphy, clothing, and items of daily life.
New Frontiers in Maximus the Confessor: Dubious, Spurious, or Lesser-Known Writings
Organizer: Kevin Clarke (clarke.kevin@shms.edu) and Corey Stephan (corey.stephan@stthom.edu)
From the Ambigua to the Mystagogia, Maximus the Confessor’s creative texts have captured the historical imaginations of multiple generations of scholars. While many large works of certain attribution hold sway over the discourse as inexhaustible fonts of research and reflection, numerous texts traditionally attributed to Maximus or otherwise strongly connected to him but of less obvious weight or opaque authorial attribution often have received less attention than they deserve. We are assembling this session as a special space for critical engagement with such texts. We welcome proposals for papers about dubia, spuria, or lesser-known writings either traditionally attributed to Maximus or directly affiliated with him in other key ways. Possible topics include the various additamenta identified by Sergei Epifanovich, the Scholia on Pseudo-Dionysius, the disputationes, the Capita XV, the Capita Gnostica, the Quaestiones ad Theopemptum, the Georgian Vita Beatae Virginis attributed to Maximus, the minor Epistles of Maximus (such as those addressed to Cyriscius, Polychronius, or others), and more. By engaging texts surrounding Maximus the Confessor that are not standard components of scholarly discourse, we intend to encourage new frontiers in scholarship on his life and thought.
Portraits of Holiness in Verse
Organizer: Erin Galgay Walsh (egwalsh@uchicago.edu)
More than twenty years ago, Michael Roberts examined the centrality of the cult of the martyrs through the lens of Prudentius’s Peristephanon. Since then, the scholarship on early Christian verse has blossomed as research has extended to a variety of poetic forms and across the languages of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian worlds. This panel brings together researchers to interrogate how this body of literature enriches our understanding of major themes in the study of late antique Christianity such as asceticism, genre, ritual, and literary culture. We invite participants to consider the various performative settings for verse compositions as well as the various degrees of cultural and spiritual prestige poetry enjoyed among different communities. How does poetry treating martyrological and hagiographical themes expand our understanding of these genres? What difference does verse make in depicting holiness? As early Christian poets memorialized the lives of martyrs and saints in verse, how did they cultivate a poetics of holiness? While traditionally studied in isolation from one another, this call aims to foster conversation among scholars working across various languages such as Latin, Greek, and Syriac to better understand how early Christians crafted portraits of holiness in verse.
Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity
Organizer: Jonathan Zecher (jonathan.zecher@gmail.com)
ReMeDHe (Working Group for Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health & Healing in Late Antiquity) explores the intersections of medical, philosophical, and religious practices and ways of knowing in late antiquity. Scholars focused on these intersections are invited to submit a proposal to present a paper in an open session. We welcome submissions utilizing multi- and trans-disciplinary approaches that combine and/or critique insights from the Social History of Medicine and Healthcare, Disability Studies, Religious Studies, Patristics, and Late Ancient Studies. Topics might include, but are not limited to, the development and function of medical discourses and practices in early Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and other literatures and communities, the effects of such discourses on the formation and transformation of late ancient culture and society, and the reception and appropriation of ancient medico-religious concepts and practices in later periods. While we warmly welcome submissions that foreground Christian materials, we also encourage submissions that include other religious literatures or communities. Graduate students and early Career researchers are especially encouraged to submit papers!
ReMeDHe is also sponsoring an online session. Please apply to the one you prefer and indicate whether you are willing to be moved to the other in your abstract.
Scripture and the Arts in Clement of Alexandria
Organizer: Cody Barnhart (c.barnhart.21@abdn.ac.uk)
Clement of Alexandria displayed an intense and often encyclopaedic interest in ‘the arts’, and his extant writings draw extensively on the fruit of human creativity. Clement often brings music, drama, poetry, sculpture and architecture into his vision of the Christian faith, weaving these unlikely elements into his complex (and often cryptic) theological expression and his exposition of the apostolic teachings. From theatrical descriptions of the divine, to musical presentations of the gathered church, to sculptural critiques of the surrounding culture, Clement’s artistic thoughts are often arrayed towards a greater end of harmonising human artistic expression with divine truths. This workshop on the theme “Scripture and the Arts in Clement of Alexandria” invites participants to engage with any element of Clement’s interaction with ‘the Arts’, broadly defined as the varied fruits of human creativity. The organisers particularly invite papers which explore ways that Clement’s consideration of artistic expression engages scriptural texts, facilitates his investigation of theological principles, or reflects the relationship he sees between Christian theology and artistic expression. This workshop hopes to bring together a range of scholars and approaches that explore not merely ‘Clement of Alexandria and the Arts’ but also how Clement’s unique enthusiasm for the diversity of human creativity shapes his posture, interaction with, and interpretation of Christian scripture. Peer-reviewed publication of papers is anticipated as part of a larger edited collection, in line with the session theme.
Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers: Online Sessions
Digital Humanities Committee’s Language Tools Session: Textual Markup & Analysis
Organizer: Paul Dilley (paul-dilley@uiowa.edu)
Electronic texts of ancient texts in a variety of languages, including Late Antique languages, have become increasingly available over the last decade, often under open licenses which allow for markup according to established conventions, such as TEI-XML, and manipulation through various applications, many through machine learning and AI. While Digital Classics is flourishing, at least as a subdiscipline, digital text analysis has not been widely used within Early Christian Studies, whether in focused digital projects or as a component of analysis for more traditional research. This is an open call for papers that use textual markup and analysis as a component of the research process, as well as describe ongoing projects, resources, and tools that feature text markup and analysis.
Religion, Medicine, Disability, Health and Healing in Late Antiquity
Organizer: Jonathan Zecher (jonathan.zecher@gmail.com)
ReMeDHe (Working Group for Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health & Healing in Late Antiquity) explores the intersections of medical, philosophical, and religious practices and ways of knowing in late antiquity. Scholars focused on these intersections are invited to submit a proposal to present a paper in an open session. We welcome submissions utilizing multi- and trans-disciplinary approaches that combine and/or critique insights from the Social History of Medicine and Healthcare, Disability Studies, Religious Studies, Patristics, and Late Ancient Studies. Topics might include, but are not limited to, the development and function of medical discourses and practices in early Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and other literatures and communities, the effects of such discourses on the formation and transformation of late ancient culture and society, and the reception and appropriation of ancient medico-religious concepts and practices in later periods. While we warmly welcome submissions that foreground Christian materials, we also encourage submissions that include other religious literatures or communities. Graduate students and early Career researchers are especially encouraged to submit papers!
ReMeDHe is also sponsoring an in-person session. Please apply to the one you prefer and indicate whether you are willing to be moved to the other in your abstract.
Useful and Personal Objects as Evidence for Early Christian Belief
Organizer: Arthur Urbano (aurbano@providence.edu)
For this special session sponsored by the International Catacomb Society, we seek papers that address the topic, “Useful and Personal Objects as Evidence for Early Christian Belief.” Of particular interest are papers that focus on material culture and materiality from the first century through to the end of late antiquity. Suggested topics include the relationship between different personal objects within a domestic context, the personal use of liturgical objects from miniature gospel books to relics, experimental or post-processual archaeological approaches to material objects as agentic, or the relationship between patristic texts about the use of objects and the objects themselves. We seek scholarship that considers the manner in which objects facilitated, constructed, and illustrated the forms and dynamics of early Christian beliefs and practices.
Summary of Important Dates
November 18, 2024 — Links for submissions close.
December 15, 2024 —Notification of acceptance.
February 15, 2025 — Program published on the NAPS website.
March 1, 2025 — Deadline to apply for Outstanding Student Paper Prizes.
May 22–24, 2025 — Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Questions? Please direct them to:
David Brakke
Vice-President, NAPS
brakke.2@osu.edu