Antiquitopia

I just finished reading Caroline Schroeder 's Monastic Bodies : Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe , which I recommend to anyone studying late antique Egypt, ancient monasticism, or uses the body as a critical lens of analysis.  I do not offer a comprehensive review here, but a series of impressions as I now step away from the book. There is, indeed, too little scholarship on Shenoute, and Caroline Schroeder, through some close analyses of key documents, draws out Shenoute's concept of the body. She relies upon much similar work done on the body and how it relates to larger groups (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger ; Peter Brown, The Body and Society ; Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body ) as well as Foucault's analyses on discipline and discourse (e.g., Discipline and Punish , and I believe some History of Sexuality was involved as well), as a broader lens by which to read Shenoute's writings. If I read Schroeder correctly, Shenoute makes a series of correspo...

It is always nice when multiple classes start overlapping.  My Religions of the World and my Sexuality and Christianity classes hit upon martyrdom and monasticism at the same time, although we spent much more time on these topics in my Sexuality and Christianity class. I had a student in one class make a suggestion through a momentary flash of inspiration that the monks--at least many of the earliest eremetical hagiographies--acted much like a shaman.  I would like to sit, think, and see if we can develop this idea a bit and see where it leads us. Firstly, while Shamanism proper belongs only to Siberia and the northern Caucuses, it is a phenomenon that shows some interesting cross-cultural comparisons with other phenomena of holy men and women, medicine men and women, etc., so long as historical context is properly taken into account. Some of the qualities often associated with these figures are: 1.  Death imagery is prevalent--the shaman is surrounded by...