Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Jennifer Barry

Jennifer Barry, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, has been awarded the 2024 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer stipend to begin work on her next book-length project titled Scandalous Christian Histories.

The stipend will be used to dedicate full-time research to examine the use of scandal stories in the ecclesiastical histories of the early Christian church. Scandalous Christian Histories emphasize how the agendas and scandals found within the ecclesiastical histories shaped competing visions of the formative years of Christianity. The book will engage multiple disciplines from the fields of Early Christian studies, late Roman studies, gender studies, and ancient historiography. The interdisciplinary nature of this project contributes to current trends that focus on the subjective nature of historical writing and sheds new light on the gendered tropes, power dynamics, and manipulations employed by early Christian historians. With meticulous research of the primary sources and applied critical analysis, offers a new perspective on the process of writing early Christian history. Ultimately, the project will reshape how readers understand the past and spark discussions on the dynamics of power, gender, and manipulation in historical narratives.

Prof. Barry is currently on research leave for the 2023-2024 academic year as the Harvard, Loeb Classical Library Fellow

Barry participates in workshop at William and Mary

On Friday, April 12, 2024, Associate Professor Jennifer Barry participated in an invited workshop at the University of William and Mary. The workshop, titled “Studying Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean: Methods, Case Studies, and Insights” spotlighted pedagogical insights from scholars and highlighted student research projects. Barry discussed the evolution of research and provided students with insight into the publishing process as well as how scholarly ideas change over time. The discussion also centered on Barry’s expertise as a teaching-focused researcher and how she brings her ideas to the classroom at UMW.

Dr. Barry is currently on research leave as a Harvard, Classical Loeb Library Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year. Her second book, Gender Violence in Late Antiquity, is now under review with the University of California Press.

Associate Professor of Religious Studies Jennifer Barry

On February 11, 2024, the online magazine, Ancient Jew Review, published a shining review of Prof. Jennifer Barry’s first book Bishops in Flight.

The review can be found here:

Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity in Review, Book Notes

Barry, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, is currently on research leave as the Harvard Loeb Classics Library Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. She is finalizing edits of her next book project Gender Violence in Late Antiquity.

Jennifer Barry, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, recently presented in two panels at the national conference for the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion.

For the first panel, sponsored by the SBallies unit, Barry participated in a roundtable on the #MeToo movement and issues around harassment, how to be an ally to people facing harassment or discrimination, and what to do if you see or experience harassment. Each panelist gave a short presentation and then generated a productive conversation with the audience. 

During the second panel, sponsored by the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism session, Barry reviewed David M. Litwa’s recent translation of the Refutation of All Heresies: Text, Translation, and Notes (Atlanta, 2016). Barry was invited to this panel by special request.

The SBLAAR conference was particularly productive and Barry was asked to join the steering committee for the SBL program unit on Exile and Biblical Literature due to her work on exile.

Jennifer Barry, Assistant Professor of Religion, recently presented at the North American Patristics Society. At a pre-arranged panel on Theorizing Gender and Violence, which she co-organized, Barry showcased new material from her next book-length project in a paper, titled, “Fantasy, Violence, and the Suffering Self.”

Jennifer Barry was also elected to the national board of the North American Patristics Society. This appointed position is a distinct honor. Barry will serve as a voting member for three years.

Jennifer Barry, Assistant Professor of Religion, presented her paper “Remembering Exile: Ecclesiastical Historians and Christian Flight” at Yale University on April 23, 2018. This paper stems out of a chapter from her forthcoming book with the University of California Press titled Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity.

Assistant Professor of Religion Jennifer Barry helped co-organize a series of events in the  Washington D.C. area throughout the academic year for the First Millennium Network (firstmillenniumnetwork.org). The FMN is a cross-institutional collaborative network that hosts academic events around Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. Barry’s involvement in the Network has been a direct response to UMW’s President Troy Paino’s call to put Mary Washington on the map. The Network places special emphasis on the diversity of, and interconnections among, the religious communities within first millennium societies—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Manicheanism, Zoroastrianism, etc.—in their multitude of forms.

On Friday, April 13, 2018, Barry, along with her fellow steering committee members, organized a day-long colloquium on “The Materiality of Relics in the First Millennium” at the University of Maryland, College Park. Four experts on relics and materiality broadly conceived were invited to share their research. Their disciplines ranged from archaeology, Carolingian textiles, Byzantine liturgical studies, and early Islamic textual practices. Each speaker was charged with the task to talk across their disciplinary boundaries, which helped to generate new and creative conversations. The day concluded with a session of reflection lead by Jennifer Barry and Samuel Collins to promote interdisciplinary connections and address thematic threads throughout the day.