"What sort of Late Antiquity? Peter Brown's 'Journey's of the Mind"

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present Dr. Geoffrey Greatrex, University of Ottawa!

Join us Friday, April 10th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82424948616), for his talk "What sort of Late Antiquity? Reflections on Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind".
This talk will be moderated by Dr. Sabrina Higgins, Director of the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor, Department of Global Humanities.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded.

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the
Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between Peter Brown’s recent autobiography and our approaches to the period known as Late Antiquity. Whereas Brown is generally positive about the many changes that overtook the Roman empire and society generally at this time, others have been more critical. It is suggested that some aspects of his biography may help to explain his more positive approach, which may not fully do justice to this tumultuous period.

Speaker Biography

Geoffrey Greatrex is a professor of Classics at the University of Ottawa, where he has taught since 2001. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he received his doctorate in later Roman history in 1994, after which he held posts at the Open University, U.K., Cardiff University and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. His research focuses on the late antique eastern empire, in particular Procopius of Caesarea and the reign of Justinian: his monograph, Rome and Persia at War, 502-532, was published in 1998, while a source book, The Roman Eastern Frontiers and the Persian Wars, A.D. 363-630, co-authored with Sam Lieu, appeared in 2002. He subsequently edited a translation and commentary of The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor (Liverpool, 2011) with two collaborators, while more recently he has produced a translation and commentary of Procopius’ Persian Wars for Cambridge University Press (2 vols., 2022) and collaborated with Stephen Mitchell on the third edition of his History of the Later Roman Empire (Hoboken, NJ, 2023); his translation of Procopius’ Persian Wars into Esperanto is due out imminently. He is a senior member of Robinson College, Cambridge, a Member of the Academia Europaea, and has held Humboldt scholarships in Munich and Cologne.

Moderator Biography

I am a field archaeologist and art historian cross appointed between the Departments of Global Humanities and Archaeology. My work is inherently multidisciplinary, intersecting the fields of Late Antique Studies, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art History, Papyrology, and Gender Studies. At present, my research is largely situated in the field of Marian studies, specifically the ways in which we can use material culture to understand the development and spread of the early cult of the Virgin Mary in Egypt. More broadly, I am also interested in the ways in which art and space interact within Late-Antique Christian religious structures and the manner in which art is used by socially marginalized populations to exert agency. In addition to these research interests, I maintain three active field projects, including the Philae Temple Graffiti Project and The Ibis Hypogeum Graffiti Project, North Abydos (both in Egypt), as well as the excavations of the late antique site at Golemo Gradište in North Macedonia. I am also the co-founder of two digital humanities projects, Peopling the Past and the Digital Mary Project.

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