Review of Seducing Augustine, by Virginia Burrus, Karmen MacKendrick, and Mark Jordan (2010)

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In this article, I examine how the apocryphal Acts of John depicts wealthy Christian
converts as part of the “Christianization” of Ephesus. I note how the Acts of John
uses its portrayal of leading citizens not only to critique, but to preserve and
adapt prevailing expectations surrounding Greco-Roman cultic patronage. My
analysis com…[Read more]

Reflections on artist Trevor Paglen’s (ab)use of the JAFFE dataset

Reflections on Trevor Paglen’s (ab)use of the JAFFE dataset

The article contains a historical account and commentary on Trevor Paglen and Kate Crawford’s unauthorized use of the JAFFE dataset.

The city of Ephesus experienced a marked civic transformation in Late Antiquity. After having centered its settlements and economic fortunes on its proximity to a deep-water harbor for over a millennium, late antique Ephesus gradually shifted to an inland, fortified settlement on Ayasoluk Hill. While several factors undoubtedly informed this civic…[Read more]

The paper proposes that the Egyptian-style design on a 5-6th century CE magical amulet discovered at Nea Paphos in Cyprus (Inv. no. PAP/FR 44/2011) draws upon an apotropaic design against the Evil Eye known as the “All-Suffering Eye,” which dates back to the time of the early Roman Empire and is common on Byzantine “Holy Rider” medallions. [No…[Read more]

Twenty-five years ago, my colleagues Miyuki Kamachi and Jiro Gyoba and I designed and photographed JAFFE, a set of facial expression images intended for use in a study of face perception. In 2019, without seeking permission or informing us, Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen exhibited JAFFE in two widely publicized art shows. In addition, they…[Read more]

Introduction, Greek text, and English translation of 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, a Byzantine question-and-answer dialogue between Abraham and John set after Jesus’s ascension.

[This draft is for the Oxford Handbook of Apophatic Theology.] This chapter identifies an apophatic theology common to the three Cappadocian Fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. The central theme of their apophatic theology is the incomprehensibility of God. God, they argue, is known under multiple concepts and n…[Read more]

This essay explores the persistent scholarly desires and motivations that structure the historical study of conversion in religious studies. Most “conversion studies” take a phenomenological approach, which acknowledges the diverse processes, contexts, and meanings of conversion but nonetheless sees the phenomenon as a way to access the con…[Read more]

This is a gut-reaction response to the recent article “The value of mass-digitised cultural heritage content in creative contexts” by Melissa Terras, et al, published in Big Data and Society on April 6, 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211006165. My main argument is that exploiting labor and appropriating cultural heritage are int…[Read more]

The seventh-century apocalyptic dialogue text Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati (“Teaching of Jacob, Newly Baptized”) depicts forcibly baptized Jews coming to terms with their new situation in hidden meetings led by Jacob. At a key moment in the text, the last voices of Jewish resistance belong to the wife and mother-in-law of one of the dialogue…[Read more]

Two art exhibitions, “Training Humans” and “Making Faces,” and the accompanying essay “Excavating AI: The politics of images in machine learning training sets” by Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, are making substantial impact on discourse taking place in the social and mass media networks, and some scholarly circles. Critical scrutiny reveals,…[Read more]

In this essay, I consider the ideal ascetic leader depicted in the Life of Moses attributed to Gregory of Nyssa: that leader is not a bishop, but a leader who has more experience with the day-to-day struggles of monks, particularly the kind of struggles described by Evagrius and writers influenced by him.

An extensive Digital Humanities bibliography with over 1,500 citations covering a variety of disciplines and topics.

Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine is an open access,
biannual, and peer-reviewed online magazine that aims to bundle cultural
diversity. All values of cultures are shown in their varieties of art. Beyond
the importance of the medium, form, and context in which art takes its
characteristics, we also consider the significance of…[Read more]