Exploring Christian Space: A Dialogue Between Professors Dina Boero and Mary Farag

How did Christians view and use space in late antiquity? Since the beginning of the academic study of religion, the notion of sacred space has been central to a definition of the ways in which humans bind themselves to the divine. In this discussion, two experts will discuss the role constructions of space played in Christian worship, asceticism, pilgrimage, and other practices.

The broadcast will be livestreamed and open to all who have pre-registered. The event will include some time for live audience questions. For those who miss the live event, the center will archive each episode on its website and YouTube channel.

About the Speakers
Dina Boero, Ph.D., is associate professor of ancient Mediterranean history at The College of New Jersey. Boero is a historian of late antiquity. Her research elucidates the making of saints, the anthropology of pilgrimage, and the development of monasticism in late-antique Syria. Whereas most scholars who address these topics focus only on the literary evidence, Boero integrates the archaeological record with Syriac and Greek sources to highlight saints and the institutions that supported them (churches, pilgrimage complexes, monasteries) as sites for negotiating competing meanings and practices. Her current book project, The Anatomy of a Cult, traces the history of Symeon the Stylite the Elder’s (d. 459) cult in the fifth to seventh centuries. Boero received her B.A. in religion from the University of California: San Diego and her M.A. and Ph.D. in classics from the University of Southern California. Before joining the faculty at TCNJ, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University in 2016-2017 and served as a visiting researcher position at the University of Waterloo in 2013-2014.

Mary K. Farag is a historian of Christianity in late antiquity. Her book What Makes a Church Sacred? Legal and Ritual Perspectives from Late Antiquity was published in 2021 as both a paperback edition and an open-access downloadable book. In general, Farag’s research focuses on Christian liturgical practices in late antiquity and their role in the wider Greco-Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds. Her geographic specialty in Egypt often leads her abroad to study Coptic and Arabic manuscripts and participate in archaeological projects. Farag is active in educational work in Coptic Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox parishes.

Emanuel Fiano is an assistant professor of Syriac studies in the theology department at Fordham University. He researches the intellectual history of late ancient Christianity, with a particular focus on Syriac and Coptic literature, religious controversies, Christian-Jewish relations, and canonical production. His first monograph, Three Powers in Heaven: The Emergence of Theology and the Parting of the Ways (Yale University Press, June 2023), examines the relevance of the fourth-century debates about Christ’s relationship to the father—also known as Trinitarian controversies—for the so-called “parting of ways” between Christianity and Judaism. The project on which he is currently at work centers on the interplay between law and theology as domains of discursive production in early Christianity and aims at redescribing their role in the establishment of an orthodoxy-based public order in the late Roman empire (with forays beyond the lines).