Participant Info

First Name
Jennifer
Last Name
Barry
Affiliation
University of Mary Washington
Website URL
https://jenniferbarry.hcommons.org/
Keywords
Early Christianity, episcopal exile, forced movement, late antiquity, gender violence, gender and sexuality studies, Religion
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Her research interests include studies in the area of late antiquity, clerical exile, heresiology, and gender violence in early Christianity. Her forthcoming book, Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity, will be published with the University of California Press Luminos Series. Her next book project is titled, A Violence All Her Own: Male Fantasies in Late Antiquity.

Professor Barry is also involved with a variety of scholarly projects in and around the DC area, which include the First Millennium Network. She is both a steering committee member and an editor for the new First Millennium book series with Catholic University of America press. Her collaborative projects also extend overseas as she is an active member of the Migrations of Faith Project and, most recently, the Shiloh Project.

Recent Publications

Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity

By: Jennifer Barry, PhD

Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face of it, it meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of the faith and its community. But, by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and hence survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. It illuminates how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Forthcoming: April 29, 2019

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
Mediterranean
Expertise by Chronology
Ancient, Medieval
Expertise by Topic
Migration & Immigration, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Women