David Brakke

• Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Department Chair, Department of Religious Studies
• Adjunct Professor, Department of History

Education

• Ph.D. at Yale University, 1992

Contact Information

Sycamore Hall, Rm. 217

(812) 855-5117

Background

I study the history and literature of ancient Christianity from the New Testament period through the fifth century. My research focuses on individual and communal self-definition, particularly as it takes place in ascetic behaviors, ritual, and the production and interpretation of scripture.

My first book, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, describes how an ascetic program of self-formation functioned also as a political program for the formation of a dominant “catholic” church in fourth-century Egypt. I have recently published Pseudo-Athanasius on Virginity, an edition and translation of a Syriac treatise, and co-edited Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation in the Early Church, which explores how biblical interpretation shaped and was shaped by communal religious identity. My most recent book, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Harvard University Press, 2006), studies how early monastic identity was formed through conflict with demons. I continue to work on Egyptian monasticism by editing and translating works by Evagrius Ponticus and Shenoute of Atripe, but I am also beginning a new monograph on the position of the Gnostic sect within early Christian diversity.

I serve as editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, which is sponsored by the North American Patristics Society and published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

In addition to a course on images of Jesus in western culture for undergraduates, I teach introductory and advanced courses in early church history, asceticism, and Gnosticism for undergraduates and graduate students.

Selected Awards

• Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship for American Teachers
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship
• Indiana University Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (1996)

Research Interests

• Ancient Christianity
• Late Antiquity
• Coptic and Syriac Studies

Courses Recently Taught

• Jesus in Popular Culture
• Christianity 50-450
• Early Christian Monasticism
• Readings in Syriac

Publication Highlights

Books

Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

[Co-edited with Michael L. Satlow and Steven Weitzman] Religion and the Self in Antiquity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

[Co-edited with Charles A. Bobertz] Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation in the Early Church. Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.

Pseudo-Athanasius On Virginity. 2 vols. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 592-93 (Scriptores Syri 232-33). Louvain: Peeters, 2002.

Athanasius and Asceticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Originally published as Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.