Thesiss

The centuries between the reigns of the emperors Constantine and Justinian were a period of great expansion for the church. My dissertation is unusual among the many studies of the church in this period in that it focuses on the economic dimension of this expansion—it seeks to e…

The legend of Abgar is an apocryphal account of how Christianity came to the Mesopotamian city of Edessa. A careful reading reveals that it is also an “invented tradition” expressing memories of a Christian community in late antiquity. Inspired by Peter Brown's study of holy men…

This dissertation is an examination of the Emperor Constantine's religious building program as presented in the writings of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. I seek to redescribe the range of Constantine's construction and destruction activities in a way that addresses some limitatio…

This dissertation seeks to analyze the relationship between law, territory, and jurisdiction in Algeria during the French colonial period. It undertakes this task through a detailed examination of the forestry regime imposed upon the colony. Forests provide a unique spatial fram…

This project focuses on the intersection of Roman Imperial politics and Christian theology in the 4th century AD. I argue that during the transition to Christianity under Constantine and his successors, Christian theology became the principal realm in which political structure a…