Andrew Jacobs

My fascination with religion in the ancient world was sparked in my very first semester in college, when I enrolled in the last minute in a course that opened my mind to ideas, cultures, and societies of which I only had the vaguest awareness. This mind-opening experience is my goal in teaching in the Engagements: what are worlds you have never thought of and how can your encounters with them potentially transform you? My own religious scholars scholarship tackles the ways early Christian religion and the ancient Roman empire became entwined, and my Engagements takes some of this source material to ask broader questions about religion, power, difference, and human possibility (including ethical questions around race, gender, sexuality, and ability). You can expect to encounter miracles on the pilgrim trail or saints dwelling in treetops in our Engagements classroom, but you should also expect their odd and unfamiliar stories to spark new questions in our own time.