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New Books in Late Antiquity

New Books Network

81 episodes

Interviews with authors of books about Late Antiquity. Sponsored by Ancient Jew Review.

More about the show

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

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Episodes page 2 of 2

  1. Cam Grey, "Living with Risk in the Late Roman World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 45

    Living With Risk in the Late Roman World (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)explores the ever-present experiences of risk that characterized the daily existence of individuals, communities, and societies in the late Roman…

  2. Shushma Malik, "The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

    · 40 min · Episode 171

    In The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm (Cambridge UP, 2020), Shushma Malik reconstructs the means by which the emperor Nero came to be identified with the New Testament's antichrist. Malik surveys…

  3. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 08 min · Episode 47

    The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'declined and fell', Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that memories of…

  4. Mara Nicosia, "Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling Ancient and Modern Vocabularies" (Gorgias Press, 2024)

    · 54 min · Episode 41

    Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling Ancient and Modern Vocabularies (Gorgias Press, 2024) publishes the papers presented at the round table on Syriac lexicology and lexicography held at the 13th Symposium Syriacum…

  5. Sarah Bassett, "Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 40

    How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual production has been defined as stylistically abstract and emotionally…

  6. Chance E. Bonar, "The Author in Early Christian Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    · 45 min · Episode 38

    While scholars of ancient Mediterranean literature have focused their efforts heavily on explaining why authors would write pseudonymously or anonymously, less time has been spent exploring why an author would write…

  7. Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    · 58 min · Episode 39

    This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to…

  8. Shane Bobrycki, "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 06 min · Episode 85

    By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did…

  9. Sarah E. Bond, "Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire" (Yale UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 37

    Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as they helped build an empire From plebeians refusing to join the Roman…

  10. Rafael Rachel Neis, "When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species" (U California Press, 2023)

    · 1 h 27 min · Episode 36

    When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species (U California Press, 2023) investigates rabbinic treatises relating to animals, humans, and other life-forms. Through an original analysis of…

  11. Catherine Hezser, "Rabbinic Scholarship in the Context of Late Antique Scholasticism: The Development of the Talmud Yerushalmi" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    · 54 min · Episode 36

    Based on an understanding of scholasticism as a cross-cultural phenomenon, undertaken by rabbinic, Graeco-Roman, and Christian scholars in late antiquity, this book examines the development of Palestinian rabbinic…

  12. Blake Leyerle, "Christians at Home: John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch" (Penn State UP, 2024)

    · 39 min · Episode 283

    What did it mean for ordinary believers to live a Christian life in late antiquity? In Christians at Home: John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch (Penn State University Press, 2024), Blake…

  13. A. J. Berkovitz, "A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

    · 1 h 06 min · Episode 35

    The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and…

  14. Julia Kelto Lillis, "Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity" (U California Press, 2022)

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 282

    Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising,…

  15. Matthew Elia, "The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery" (Yale UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 15 min · Episode 285

    The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery (Yale UP, 2024) offers a bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery. Over the last two decades, scholars have…

  16. Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 276

    Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton…

  17. Simcha Gross, "Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 34

    From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian…

  18. Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, "Desert Ascetics of Egypt" (ARC Humanities Press, 2020)

    · 57 min · Episode 275

    Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and…

  19. Philip Freeman, "Julian: Rome's Last Pagan Emperor" (Yale UP, 2023)

    · 36 min · Episode 31

    Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled Rome as sole emperor for just a year and a half, from 361…

  20. Martha Rampton, "Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000" (Cornell UP, 2021)

    · 51 min · Episode 12

    Martha Rampton, Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000 (Cornell University Press, 2021) explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the…

  21. Laura Salah Nasrallah, "Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 32

    Ancient Christians and their non-Christian contemporaries lived in a world of 'magic.' Sometimes, they used curses as ritual objects to seek justice from gods and other beings; sometimes, they argued against them.…

  22. Laura S. Lieber, "Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry" (Oxford UP, 2023)

    · 59 min · Episode 29

    Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the importance of Christian, Jewish, and Samaritan liturgical poetry from Late Antiquity through the lenses of performance,…

  23. Anna Bonnell Freidin, "Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 35 min · Episode 30

    Across the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, anxieties about childbirth tied individuals to one another, to the highest levels of imperial politics, even to the movements of the stars. Birthing Romans: Childbearing and…

  24. Robin Darling Young et al, "Evagrius of Pontus: The Gnostic Trilogy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 31 min · Episode 272

    The Gnostic Trilogy is the best-known and most important work by the ascetic philosopher and teacher Evagrius of Pontus. Among the writers of his age, Evagrius stands out for his short, perplexing, and absorbing…

  25. Mark Letteney, "The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 28

    The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations (Cambridge UP, 2023) traces the beginning of Late Antiquity from a new angle. Shifting the focus away from the…

  26. Anthony Kaldellis, "The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    · 57 min · Episode 1458

    In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how its society and state operated. No longer looked upon…

  27. Jeremiah Coogan, "Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity" (Oxford UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 161

    The development of Christian scriptures did not terminate once, for example, following Irenaeus and other influential patristic figures, the four gospels that would later be located at the front of the church’s New…

  28. Andrew S. Jacobs, "Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 06 min · Episode 271

    What if the original teachings of Jesus were different from the Bible's sanitized 'orthodox' version? What covert motivations might inspire those who decide what the text of the Bible 'says' or what it 'means'? For…

  29. Catherine Michael Chin, "Life: The Natural History of an Early Christian Universe" (U California Press, 2024)

    · 1 h 14 min · Episode 266

    A vivid and intimate glimpse of ancient life under the sway of cosmic and spiritual forces that the modern world has forgotten. Life: The Natural History of an Early Christian Universe (U California Press, 2024)…

  30. Jae Hee Han, "Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 260

    In Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East (Cambridge UP, 2023), Jae Han investigates how various Late Antique Near Eastern communities—Jews, Christians, Manichaeans, and philosophers—discussed prophets and…

  31. Anthony Kaldellis, "The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    · 32 min · Episode 25

    In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how its society and state operated. No longer looked upon…

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