By Sarah Parson and Emy Pinto
On April 23rd and 24th, 2025, the above-entitled conference organized by Dr. Katherine Taronas took place at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Taronas started the first day of the conference by noting the focus on ancient sense models and cognitive models in the late antique Mediterranean conception of divine bodies as well as ancient predecessors, influences, and their medieval legacies. She noted that this topic is informed by the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Patricia Cox Miller, the former of which presented the idea that the material and the human are but dim bodies compared to dazzling bodies of the divine, while the latter expands on emaciated ascetic bodies as angelic. The conference included sessions focused on Statue Bodies, Heavenly Bodies, Liquid and Light Gods, the Divine and the Senses, Defining Divinity, Sacred Portraits, Imagining Artifacts, and Saintly Bodies. These papers spanned from the ancient Semitic world, Greco-Roman religion and philosophy, late antique and medieval Christianity, to the reception of Islam in Tang China. The conference presenters were faculty from UT’s Religious Studies, Art History, and Classics departments as well as faculty from across the US.
The first paper of the conference was a shock to the system as it opened with an image of the statue of Priapus and his enlarged phallus. Dr. Rabun Taylor led with a paper on the relationship between statues and the nature of gods in Roman religion, centrally focusing on Janus and Priapus. Dr. Jonathan Kaplan’s paper also considered statues by analyzing Nebuchadnezzar’s statue dream in Daniel 2, and highlighted a recurring theme of the conference that the creation of narratives, including images and textual description of images, are informed by regional traditions and influences. Dr. Mika Ahuvia’s paper on Psyche, Dr. Karin Krause’s paper on the Mandylion cloth, and Dr. Martha Newman’s paper on the 12th century account of the conversion of a Jew also addressed this theme.
Moving past the visual, there was a consideration of late antique liturgical song and word-pictures in the Apocalypse of John as embodied presence of visual images, which emerged in the Q&A sessions following Dr. Georgia Frank’s and Dr. Brittany Wilson’s papers. Other themes that came up include competition in the Epicurean conception of divinity as well as the critique of allegorical exegesis because it is too ‘material.’ Some papers considered the theme of the dazzling body through light and water mediating the divine body—be it how light hit a cave, cult sites at thermal springs, or the Syriac Revelation of the Magi denoting a luminous Christ child. Other papers examined image veneration practices, such as Marcellina and her followers, as mentioned in Irenaeus, and relic veneration in the Middle Ages.
On the final day of the conference following the final paper, the remaining presenters collected their thoughts and shared some of the surprising concepts that were illuminated over these two days. These include highlights of how the senses could be triggered but then misdirected. A good example of this includes the gold arm-shaped reliquaries shown by Dr. Cynthia Hahn, which concealed the true prize of the reliquary—the relic. Another throughline suggested was that of the discussion of beauty vs non-beauty, which was emphasized in Dr. C. Michael Chin’s paper on the filthy beauty of St. Sebastian. Presenters also reflected on the mindset of the viewer as they engaged with images and the effect of the viewer on the image.
This conference was lively and itself mediated by graduate student moderators from the Religious Studies Department. The organizer Dr. Katherine Taronas, now a member of the Religious Studies faculty, set a great tone for studies in the material and visual culture of the Late Antique Mediterranean world, its influences, and influence.
Emy Pinto is a PhD student in Ancient Mediterranean Religions at UT. She holds a BA (Hons) in Ancient Greek from Stellenbosch University.
Sarah Parson is a PhD student in Ancient Mediterranean Religions at UT, and her work specializes in childhood in early Christianity.