PSCO
Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins
an Interdisciplinary Humanities Seminar
in its fiftieth-eighth year under the auspices of
The University of Pennsylvania
Department of Religious Studies
201 Cohen Hall, Philadelphia PA 19104
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PSCO Presentation: Monday, 9 October, 2006
"Renouncing Renunciation:
Early Christian Asceticism, Anti-Catholicism,
and the Establishment of Patristics in America."
Elizabeth Clark (Duke University)
THE FIRST MEETING OF THE 2006-07 YEAR will be held on Monday, 9 October 2006, from 7:00-9:00 pm in the Second Floor Lounge, Logan Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.
The topic for the 44th year of PSCO is "Re-thinking History, Theory, and Texts: New Theoretical and Methodological Endeavors." We take our theme from Elizabeth Clark's recent book, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn, in which she attempts to persuade historians of ancient texts, especially those of early Christianity, "that the texts they study are highly amenable to the types of literary/philosophical/theoretical critique that have excited other humanities disciplines under the rubric of post-structuralism" (p.ix). We plan to invite scholars to share current work that utilizes new theoretical approaches in interpreting ancient Jewish and Christian texts.
Fittingly, Elizabeth Clark, from Duke University, will be the presenter for our first meeting on Monday, October 9, 7:00-9:00 pm (please note that it is not our usual day of the week). The title of her presentation is "Renouncing Renunciation: Early Christian Asceticism, Anti-Catholicism, and the Establishment of Patristics in America." She will focus on the how scholars -- all Protestants -- of early Christianity in 19th century America dealt with the topic of early Christian asceticism, a topic for which they had considerable loathing, and which they associated with Roman Catholicism, so troubling to them and other Protestants as a force in their time.
Recommended Reading
For an overview of more recent scholarship on asceticism and background reading for her talk, Professor Clark recommends Chapter Two ("Asceticism in Late Ancient Christianity") of her book Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton Univ. Press, 1999).
Dining
As usual, those of us wishing to dine will gather at the University of Pennsylvania in Logan Hall (2nd floor lounge) at 6:00 pm for an informal dinner in the nearby Food Court, and then meet back in the Logan Hall Lounge for Professor Clark's presentation.