New readings of late antique creation narratives “reveal unexpectedly ‘ecological’ – i.e., compassionate and relational – views of the natural world.” In this interview, we discuss late antiquity and ecocriticism with Paola F. Moretti (Milan) and Alessia Prontera (Venice-L’Aquila), who are members of the research team working on the project HUMAN (= HUMAns in Nature.…

Simon Goldhill and Chiara Thumiger discuss their recent work on (late) antiquity and environmental thinking, covering the importance of environmental thinking in the study of ancient medicine, and the impact that late antique Christianity has had on human conceptions of nature.

We are excited to introduce a new project on ecocritical approaches to late antiquity, currently underway at the University of Milan and the University of l’Aquila: HUMAN. “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen”. It is a famous statement of Lynn White according to which Christianity is often accused of being responsible…

“We need to be much bolder in the way we use the past for our own purposes in the present.” Jason König shares his thoughts mountains, ecocriticism, and (late) antiquity. König is professor in Greek at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and…

Glenn Peers thinks with parrots in his discussion of a fifth-century Syriac sermon by Isaac of Antioch. Glenn Peers is Croghan Bicentennial Visiting Professor in Biblical and Early Christian Studies at Williams College in the spring of 2024. He formerly taught in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, and in the Department of…

Marco Formisano is Professor of Latin literature at Ghent University, and has been teaching an MA course specifically on ecocritical approaches to late Latin literature. Late Latin Ecopoetics: journey, displacement, interruption. In this course we explore a number of late Latin poetic texts, written between the late 4th and 6th centuries, through an ecocritical lens. Our corpus…

“It does make a difference whether you see literature as a predominantly intertextual undertaking or as a living, breathing act of responding to a world of human and nonhuman others.” A discussion with Christopher Schliephake on his journey with ecocriticism and late antiquity. Dr. phil. habil. Christopher Schliephake is an ancient historian, with an Americanist…

Kate Rigby on ecocriticism, late ancient Christianity, and a hexameron for the Anthropocene.

Over the course of the 4th to the 6th centuries, the ancient world was coming to its end in the midst of massive change: the establishment of Christianity, alterations in political structures, and, as K. Harper has argued in The Fate of Rome, climate change. Now known as “late” antiquity, this period by definition comes…