Theoria

Series Editors: John Penniman (Bucknell University), Krista Dalton (Kenyon College), and Emanuel Fiano (Fordham University)

This series aims to advance theoretically sophisticated and lucidly written engagements with late ancient religions. The works the series promotes investigate the interactions of the diverse late ancient religious traditions with the intellectual and material cultures of late antiquity within a broad geographic span. We take as a point of departure the semantic range of the Greek word theōría (i.e., being a spectator; a mode of viewing or beholding the world; contemplation and speculation; a continuous exposition; or, even, a pilgrimage). The entanglement of seeing and knowing was widespread in antiquity, drawing the viewer into a relationship with the object of contemplation. Meanwhile, the sightline referenced in the series subtitle is an architectural term describing how a particular viewpoint shapes one’s experience of what is being viewed. Theoria highlights scholarship that uses contemporary cultural theory as a method to create new ways of understanding the worlds and legacies of these cultures. We invite submissions that adopt a transdisciplinary approach to the religious cultures of the late ancient Mediterranean, including but not limited to rabbinic, early Christian, and early Islamic contexts. We want to nurture approaches that creatively apply theoretical reflection to pursue fresh readings of well-worn sources, link parts of the archive that have not been previously connected, and forge new pathways for under-examined and recently uncovered evidence from the past.

John Penniman (PhD, Fordham University) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Bucknell University. His research explores the development of Christianity within the Mediterranean context of Greek and Roman religious cultures. His first book, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (Yale, 2017) , traces the idea that “you are what you eat” across early Christian literature.

Krista Dalton (PhD, Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College. Her first book, entitled How Rabbis Became Experts (Princeton, 2025), analyzes the process by which the rabbis of late ancient Roman Palestine became seen as religious experts in Jewish communities.

Emanuel Fiano (PhD, Duke University) is Associate Professor of Syriac in the Theology Department at Fordham University and Co-Director of Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies. His first monograph, Three Powers in Heaven: The Emergence of Theology and the Parting of the Ways (Yale, 2023), reinterprets the late ancient estrangement between Jews and Christians in the context of post-Nicene theological debates as a separation between intellectual traditions.