Join us for the School of Social Sciences Brown Bag lecture series on Monday, March 14th at 12pm with Sam Cohen, Associate Professor of History.
Title: Migration, Charity, and Community in Fifth Century Rome
This talk examines the connections between migration, heresy, and charity in Late Antique Rome. More specifically, it considers how church leaders used Manichean heretics, which they associated with North African migrants to the city, in order to reimagine the boundaries of community. Traditionally, belonging had been defined by Roman and civic citizenship. However in the fifth century, Roman bishops like Leo I (440-461) promoted a new Christian conception of society, which emphasized the deserving poor – the populus dei – receiving alms administered by the church under the authority and patronage of its bishop. In this context, the Manichaean functioned didactically as the ultimate ›other‹. As heretics and outsiders to the city, they were the perfect foil against which Leo could contrast his populus dei, and thereby delineate the boundaries of his community. Indeed, Leo’s condemnations of Manichaeans can be found principally in sermons about other topics including charity, a theme that was particularly well-suited to address questions of community and belonging.
Dr. Samuel Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. His research examines social and religious conflict, competition, and community formation in the late antique Mediterranean world from the third to the early seventh centuries. Within this wider area of interest, his research to date has considered questions related to the construction of religious identities, the rhetorical strategies used to include and exclude, the reception of migrants and attitudes toward exile, and urban social unrest and violence.
The School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Series is always free, open to faculty, staff, students, and the public, and provides a congenial interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of recent research by School of Social Sciences faculty. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021-2022 Brown Bag Series will take place via Zoom.