Virginia Burrus
Biographic Data
| ID | 225019 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Virginia Burrus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Virginia |
| FAMILY NAME | Burrus |
| SIGNATURE | BURRUS V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Drew University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Life of an Object
Toward a Theology of Eros
Ancient Christian Ecopoetics
In our age of ecological crisis, what insights-if any-can we expect to find by looking to our past? Perhaps, suggests Virginia Burrus, early Christianity might yield usable insights. Turning aside from the familiar specter of Christianity's human-centered theology of dominion, Burrus directs our attention to aspects of ancient Christian thought and practice that remain strange and alien. Drawn to excess and transgression, in search of transformat…
Knowing bodies, passionate souls
The fruit of a conference hosted by Dumbarton Oaks (25–27 April 2014), this handsome, richly illustrated volume seeks to turn scholarly attention from a more commonly acknowledged “sensorily capaci
History, Theology, Orthodoxy, Polydoxy
The discourse of orthodoxy and heresy has proven both extraordinarily powerful in its historical effects and woefully inadequate as a historical map of theological diversity. The documents of ancient C hristianity reveal subtleties of differentiation that only sometimes come to be framed in polarized terms, as well as violent simplifications of asserted polarities that inevitably hide more than they reveal about a religious movement that placed n…
Nothing Is Not One
This article seeks to encounter the late ancient doctrine of creatio ex nihilo from a new angle, gently questioning both its distinctive Christianness and its inevitable alignment with a theology of absolute sovereignty. Franz Rosenzweig's idiosyncratic elaboration of this doctrine opens up new lines of thought: multiplying the “nothing” while also emphasizing its fecundity, he articulates not only a negative theology but also a negative anthropo…
Flesh Made Word
Reviewed by: Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination Virginia Burrus (bio) Aviad Kleinberg. Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination. Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard UP, 2008. 340 pp. ISBN 978-06740-2647-6, $29.95. The quintessentially Christian biographical genre known as the Lives of Saints has not lacked scholarly attention in recent decades. Indeed, prevailing interests in gender, sexuality…
Toward a Theology of Eros
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren's influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largel…
Toward a Theology of Eros
Roundtable Discussion
Contested Terms: History, Feminism, Religion Having been asked to join Margaret Miles and others in reflecting on "writing feminist religious history," I am immediately struck by the ambiguity that attends each of the terms in question. History Miles notes that writing feminist history mandates questioning "basic assumptions about historiography." Open to question, it seems to me, are not only the schemes of periodization and models of progress t…
Hybridity as Subversion of Orthodoxy? Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity
Hybridity inflects Jewish and Christian identity in precisely the places where ‘‘purity’’ is most forcefully inscribed. In the formative texts of both traditions, heresy is pushed ‘‘outside’’ via its syncretistic representation, even as the other religion is brought ‘‘inside’’ through its close identification with heresy. Athanasius of Alexandria’s 4th-century construction of doctrinal orthodoxy in opposition to the ‘‘Judaizing’’ heresy of Arius …
Elizabeth Clark's History, Theory, Text
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Macrina's Tattoo
Research Article| September 01 2003 Macrina's Tattoo Virginia Burrus Virginia Burrus Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (3): 403–417. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-3-403 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Virginia Burrus; Macrina's Tattoo. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 September 2003; …
The Manly Eunuch
Hailing Zenobia
John Henry Newman's early nineteenth‐century monograph The Arians of the Fourth Century iterates and intensifies the anti‐Jewish rhetoric already conveyed by the Nicene trinitarian theology inaugurated by Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century. Invoking philosopher Judith Butler's analysis of the performative power of ‘hate speech’ not only to injure, but also to interpellate subjects who may be heard to ‘talk back’, the present article s…
Performing sadomasochism in the song of songs
(2002). Performing sadomasochism in the song of songs. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 129-146
‘Begotten, Not Made’
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the sine qua non of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal auth…
Blurring the Boundaries
The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome
Some three decades ago Michel Foucault sought to reestablish communication between “madness” and “non-madness” by going back to what he called the “zero point” in history at which the distance between reason and madness was first established. In Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason , Foucault suggested that returning to this point of initial differentiation requires renouncing all that we as modern persons know to …
Rhetorical Stereotypes in the Portrait of Paul of Samosata
Macrina's Tattoo
Research Article| September 01 2003 Macrina's Tattoo Virginia Burrus Virginia Burrus Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (3): 403–417. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-3-403 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Virginia Burrus; Macrina's Tattoo. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 September 2003; …
Hailing Zenobia
John Henry Newman's early nineteenth‐century monograph The Arians of the Fourth Century iterates and intensifies the anti‐Jewish rhetoric already conveyed by the Nicene trinitarian theology inaugurated by Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century. Invoking philosopher Judith Butler's analysis of the performative power of ‘hate speech’ not only to injure, but also to interpellate subjects who may be heard to ‘talk back’, the present article s…
Rhetorical Stereotypes in the Portrait of Paul of Samosata
The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome
Some three decades ago Michel Foucault sought to reestablish communication between “madness” and “non-madness” by going back to what he called the “zero point” in history at which the distance between reason and madness was first established. In Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason , Foucault suggested that returning to this point of initial differentiation requires renouncing all that we as modern persons know to …
Blurring the Boundaries
‘Begotten, Not Made’
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the sine qua non of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal auth…
Hailing Zenobia
John Henry Newman's early nineteenth‐century monograph The Arians of the Fourth Century iterates and intensifies the anti‐Jewish rhetoric already conveyed by the Nicene trinitarian theology inaugurated by Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century. Invoking philosopher Judith Butler's analysis of the performative power of ‘hate speech’ not only to injure, but also to interpellate subjects who may be heard to ‘talk back’, the present article s…
Performing sadomasochism in the song of songs
(2002). Performing sadomasochism in the song of songs. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 129-146
Macrina's Tattoo
Research Article| September 01 2003 Macrina's Tattoo Virginia Burrus Virginia Burrus Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (3): 403–417. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-3-403 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Virginia Burrus; Macrina's Tattoo. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 September 2003; …
The Manly Eunuch
Hybridity as Subversion of Orthodoxy? Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity
Hybridity inflects Jewish and Christian identity in precisely the places where ‘‘purity’’ is most forcefully inscribed. In the formative texts of both traditions, heresy is pushed ‘‘outside’’ via its syncretistic representation, even as the other religion is brought ‘‘inside’’ through its close identification with heresy. Athanasius of Alexandria’s 4th-century construction of doctrinal orthodoxy in opposition to the ‘‘Judaizing’’ heresy of Arius …
Elizabeth Clark's History, Theory, Text
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Toward a Theology of Eros
Roundtable Discussion
Contested Terms: History, Feminism, Religion Having been asked to join Margaret Miles and others in reflecting on "writing feminist religious history," I am immediately struck by the ambiguity that attends each of the terms in question. History Miles notes that writing feminist history mandates questioning "basic assumptions about historiography." Open to question, it seems to me, are not only the schemes of periodization and models of progress t…
Toward a Theology of Eros
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren's influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largel…
Flesh Made Word
Reviewed by: Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination Virginia Burrus (bio) Aviad Kleinberg. Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination. Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard UP, 2008. 340 pp. ISBN 978-06740-2647-6, $29.95. The quintessentially Christian biographical genre known as the Lives of Saints has not lacked scholarly attention in recent decades. Indeed, prevailing interests in gender, sexuality…
Nothing Is Not One
This article seeks to encounter the late ancient doctrine of creatio ex nihilo from a new angle, gently questioning both its distinctive Christianness and its inevitable alignment with a theology of absolute sovereignty. Franz Rosenzweig's idiosyncratic elaboration of this doctrine opens up new lines of thought: multiplying the “nothing” while also emphasizing its fecundity, he articulates not only a negative theology but also a negative anthropo…
History, Theology, Orthodoxy, Polydoxy
The discourse of orthodoxy and heresy has proven both extraordinarily powerful in its historical effects and woefully inadequate as a historical map of theological diversity. The documents of ancient C hristianity reveal subtleties of differentiation that only sometimes come to be framed in polarized terms, as well as violent simplifications of asserted polarities that inevitably hide more than they reveal about a religious movement that placed n…
Ancient Christian Ecopoetics
In our age of ecological crisis, what insights-if any-can we expect to find by looking to our past? Perhaps, suggests Virginia Burrus, early Christianity might yield usable insights. Turning aside from the familiar specter of Christianity's human-centered theology of dominion, Burrus directs our attention to aspects of ancient Christian thought and practice that remain strange and alien. Drawn to excess and transgression, in search of transformat…
Knowing bodies, passionate souls
The fruit of a conference hosted by Dumbarton Oaks (25–27 April 2014), this handsome, richly illustrated volume seeks to turn scholarly attention from a more commonly acknowledged “sensorily capaci
Toward a Theology of Eros
The Life of an Object
Philosophy (15 works) · History (13 works) · Art (9 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (9 works) · Theology (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Religious studies (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)