Dear Colleague:
We invite your application to an NEH Summer Seminar entitled “The Middle East Between Rome and Iran: Early Christianity and the Path to Islam.” The Seminar will draw on the literature and material culture of the region to explore the ways in which the resurgent indigenous cultures there – Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic-speaking Jewish, and Armenian – re-emerged with the decline of local Hellenism to form a population that would in the seventh century be receptive to a new political and religious hegemony. For four centuries, this region was prized by western or Iranian empires and dominated by the imperial culture, language and religion of each. Despite these rival hegemonies, by the beginning of the seventh century the Middle East in late antiquity was reemerging as a distinct zone, a fungible area allowing for the passage, conquest and settlement of the dar al Islam. Christian and Jewish cultures in the old marchlands between the Iranian and Roman imperia were being incorporated in a central Islamic territory. There they would coexist in a multireligious society that only at the present moment is finally shattering. We intend to explore how the native Christianities and the Jewish communities of the region made such a conquest and enduring settlement possible.
Our inquiry begins with the matter of declining Seleucid power after 95 BCE. Even as Roman imperial forces sought to control the area, local cultures and languages began to re-emerge and assert themselves politically and culturally. During this period Tigranes of Armenia assumed the Iranian title “King of Kings” and expanded his kingdom into Anatolia and Syria. At the same time, ethnic Arab dynasties asserted independence in Edessa, Chalcis, Petra, Palmyra, and Emesa. Indigenous languages spread beyond their original confines. Syriac and Armenian spread well beyond their original borders and become dominant languages in their respective regions. Although the arrival of Pompey in the East in 63 BCE led to the eventual imposition of Roman rule as the region became incorporated as client kingdoms, and ultimately as provinciae of the Roman empire, the borderlands between Rome and Persia were not merely occupied territories. These lands – Syriac, Arabic, Armenian (and Coptic to the southwest) – were sites where local Christianities reinvigorated older, non-Hellenistic cultures to produce a belt of indigenous peoples and religions reasserting their own cultures between two empires.
SEMINAR DIRECTORS AND VISITING SCHOLARS
Professors Joseph P. Amar and Robin Darling Young of the University of Notre Dame will co-direct the seminar. As historians of Syriac and Arabic and the history of early Christianity respectively, we share a transdisciplinary approach that will encourage an engagement with a broad range of sources in order to explore the basic questions of the seminar. Professor Amar is a linguist trained in ancient and modern Semitic languages and in the histories, religions, and cultures of the Middle East. He specializes in classical and Christian Arabic, in Syriac literary culture, and in early interactions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He has recently published the two-volume work: Dionysius Bar Salibi's Response to the Arabs, (2006). His other books include St. Ephrem the Syrian and The Mimra of Jacob of Sarug on Holy Mar Ephrem. He has published in Patrologia Orientalis, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Diakonia, Le Museon as well as in Commonweal and Worship. Professor Robin Darling Young is a historian of early Christianity who specializes in the cultures and literary works of the late ancient Christian east – Greek, Syriac and Armenian. She has published translations and studies of early Armenian Christian texts, and has written on the monastic traditions of the Greek- and Syriac-speaking communities of late antiquity. Her coauthored translation and commentary on the ancient Jewish apocalyptic text known as IV Ezra will appear in 2007.
In addition, three visiting scholars will join the seminar for two days each during three of the six weeks: Professor Hindy Najman of the University of Toronto in ancient and rabbinic Judaism, Professor Peter Cowe of the University of California, Los Angeles, in the study of ancient Armenia and the Caucasus, and Professor Amir Harrak of the University of Toronto, in the study of the late ancient archaeology and literature of Mesopotamia.
Seminar members will examine the documents and monuments of cultures that often have been overshadowed in the accounts of many historians of the later Roman Empire or of ancient Persia. Participants could be historians of Christianity, specialists in eastern Christianity, historians of late antiquity, specialists in Persian history, or classicists interested in a new perspective on the other languages and cultures of the Roman empire. Since the Seminar’s leaders are trained in two different fields (Semitic languages and history, and the history of eastern Christianity respectively) our approach is transdisciplinary; we hope for participants who come from a number of disciplines. The aim of the Seminar is to spur new consideration of a wide range of sources, aiming for a deeper understanding not only of the regional cultures under consideration, but of the preparation of this region for the rise of Islam.
WEEKLY SEMINAR TOPICS
The first week constitutes an introduction to the regions of Mesopotamia and the Caucasus in late antiquity. How did the indigenous cultures of the former Iranian provinces of Armenia and Mesopotamia, as well as formerly Greek-ruled Syria, become focal points for the spread and development of Christian communities throughout the region? The second week of the seminar considers the range of Judaisms in the East after the wars of the first and second century, and focuses on early rabbinic and mystical texts reflecting the loss of the religion’s urban center and temple. How did the work of the rabbinical academies overlap with Christian communities in formation in the region?
During the third week, we look at the role of Syriac and Armenian in articulating Christian identities. How does Greek evidence in the form of epigraphic and literary sources compare with the less well known Syriac and other Aramaic inscriptions of the same period? What is the significance of the work of Tatian and Bardaisan and their ties to the major urban center of Syriac culture, Edessa? Likewise, we will consider how the Christian communities of the Armenian plateau began to create a literature and concept of an “Armenian nation.” In the fourth week of the seminar, we consider the expansion of religious traditions among Jewish and Christian communities in Syria and Mesopotamia, in particular the Mandaeans, with their Aramaic texts, and the Manichaeans, a self-consciously international movement with roots in Jewish-Christian and Aramaic culture.
The fifth week of the Seminar moves to a consideration of foundational institutions in Mesopotamia. What were the importance of the “schools” of the region – Edessa, Nisibis, Antioch, and to a lesser extent, Caesarea and Etchmiadzin? How did the cultures of the region form their own versions of the learned traditions inherited both from Hellenistic culture and the older, indigenous culture of Mesopotamia? The final week of the Seminar considers the “commonwealth” of indigenous cultures and polities that began to form in a long arc from Armenia in the north to Egypt in the south. From the mid-fifth century, the indigenous Christian churches of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia turned theological polemics following from universal councils into a dynamic process whereby they could regain their self-rule on the basis of their independent, native-language Christian traditions. Did their final rejection of Hellenism in the East prepare the way for Islam?
The Seminar will meet at the University of Notre Dame from June 13 to July 29, 2007. We will convene for a three-hour discussion three mornings a week (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday). After the first week, where the Seminar will cover introductory material, each meeting will focus on a close reading and thorough discussion of selected primary texts. We will also consider secondary, interpretive materials as they contextualize and illumine the primary sources. Participants may present their own work in progress during the weeks in which the topics are most germane to their own interests. The afternoons will be used primarily for research and elaboration of each participant’s project; this will occur primarily in the Hesburgh Library.
Both Professors Amar and Young will make themselves available through regularly scheduled office hours or individually-arranged appointments during the weeks of the Seminar. We plan to meet with each participant once during the first week, and at mutually convenient times throughout the duration of the seminar.
We will follow the NEH procedure for selection. Participants will be selected on the basis of how closely their scholarly concerns and projects may both contribute and be informed by the Seminar.
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS
Members of the Seminar will have the status of Visiting Faculty at the University of Notre Dame. They will have access to all facilities, including the Hesburgh Library. The Library has an excellent collection of books and materials in early Christian studies and in late ancient history. Its collection in the period of Judaism with which the Seminar is concerned is sufficient for research purposes. Seminar participants will find most useful the collections of the Byzantine Collection and the Medieval Institute Library along with the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana Microfilm collection. Other resources will be available through catalogues and electronic services.
Meetings will take place in the third-floor seminar room in the new Malloy Hall, where there is a small collection of texts to support the work of the Seminar, and where wireless access is available. The University of Notre Dame hosts numerous conferences and symposia of varying sizes throughout the academic year, and has already been the site for the International Syriac Studies Symposium (1999), a North American scholarly group from which some of the members of the Seminar may come. The campus is quiet and pleasant in the summer and has numerous athletic and recreational facilities. The stipend for the 2007 Seminar is $4,200. Seminar participants may choose off-campus housing or an air-conditioned room on the university campus (anticipated 2007 rates $48 per night single, $35 per person per night double occupancy). They will have daily meals with the Directors of the Seminar during the week (optional conference meal plans anticipated rates for 2007, $39 per day). There are numerous dining facilities on campus. Chicago (a two-hour train ride away) and the Lake Michigan shore are easily accessible, and the University’s immediate surroundings are also pleasant in the summer.
Participants will be able to stay in close touch with both Directors, the visiting faculty, and each other, by means of a listserv available during and after the Seminar, as well as by more conventional means. The Seminar will be evaluated with the use of NEH forms. Both Directors will encourage the development of the summer research projects into larger inquiries with resultant publications. They hope to have their questions engaged, challenged, expanded or controverted, and will be available for the necessary discussions with participants both during the Seminar and afterwards. They will be willing and able to advise participants on possible venues for publication.
APPLICATIONS TO THE SEMINAR
Application information is included with this letter. Your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 15, 2007, and should be addressed as follows:
Professors Joseph P. Amar/Robin Darling Young, Department of Classics, 304 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame Indiana, 46556.
Perhaps the most important part of the application is the essay that must be submitted as part of the complete application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant; reasons for applying to our seminar; your interest, both intellectual and personal, in the topic; qualifications to do the work of the project and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by participation, including any individual research and writing projects; and the relation of the study to your teaching.