Travis W. Proctor, a 2017 PhD graduate of our department, has recently published his first book, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture:
Drawing insights from gender studies and the environmental humanities, Demonic Bodies analyzes how ancient Christians constructed the Christian body through its relations to demonic adversaries. Case studies on New Testament texts, early Christian church fathers, and “Gnostic” writings trace how early followers of Jesus construed the demonic body in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways, as both embodied and bodiless, “fattened” and ethereal, heavenly and earthbound. Across this diversity of portrayals, however, demons consistently functioned as personifications of “deviant” bodily practices such as “magical” rituals, immoral sexual acts, gluttony, and “pagan” religious practices. This demonization served an exclusionary function where by Christian writers marginalized fringe Christian groups by linking their ritual activities to demonic modes of (dis)embodiment. Demonic Bodies demonstrates, therefore, that the formation of early Christian cultures was part of the shaping of broader Christian “ecosystems,” which in turn informed Christian experiences of their own embodiment and community.
About the Author:
Posted in Alumni News, News & Events on May 18, 2022. Bookmark the permalink.Travis W. Proctor is Assistant Professor of Religion at Wittenberg University. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Ancient Mediterranean Religions from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research has appeared in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, Harvard Theological Review, Studies in Late Antiquity, and Journal of Ecclesiastical History, as well as public venues including Religion Dispatches, The Bart Ehrman Blog, and the “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” podcast.