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Dr. Maia Kotrosits, Denison University

September 27, 2017, 7-9pm
Biosciences 1120
Free and open to the public

Depicting God’s judgment and the destruction of a corrupt world, followed by the redemption of the faithful, John’s Revelation is often understood as the unique beliefs of first century Christians, if not also a prediction of what is still to come. By contrast, this lecture proposes an understanding of Revelation neither as prediction nor as theological statement, but rather as a felt and fantasized response to Roman power as imagined by everyday people in the Roman provinces – those who had little actual contact with Roman rulers and administration. What then might Revelation’s fantasies of power and destruction express for its first century readers? What changes when we read early Christian literature as an “archive of feelings” rather than straightforward theological or doctrinal statements? And what do feelings and fantasies have to do with the writing of history?

Dr. Maia Kotrosits is Assistant Professor of Religion at Denison University, teaching in the Classics and Women and Gender Studies departments, as well. Her work finds points of contact between the literature of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly ancient Christian and Jewish literature, and contemporary cultural studies and theory. Her most recent book, Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence and Belonging (Fortress Press, 2015) reads a handful of early Christian texts as responses to diasporic trauma and loss under the Roman Empire. She has also co-written books on the Gospel of Mark, and on the ancient Coptic poem from Nag Hammadi, The Thunder: Perfect Mind.