Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Egyptian Pagans through Christian Eyes
    (2016) Juliussen-Stevenson, Heather Ann; Holum, Kenneth; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Construction of Christian identity in Egypt proceeded in pace with construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other” between the second and sixth centuries. Apologies, martyrdoms, apocalypses, histories, sermons, hagiographies, and magical texts provide several different vantage points from which to view the Christian construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other”: as the agent of anti-Christian violence, as an intellectual rival, as an object of anti-pagan violence, as an obstacle to salvation, and—perhaps most dangerously—as but another participant in a shared religious experience. The recent work of social scientists on identity, deviance, violence, social/cultural memory, and religiosity provides insight into the strategies by which construction of the “Other” was part of a larger project of fashioning a “proper” Christian religious domain.
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    Performing Christian Female Identity in Roman Alexandria
    (2008-05-05) Juliussen-Stevenson, Heather Ann; Holum, Kenneth; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The Christian women of Roman Alexandria are something of a mystery, but they were integral to the transformation of religion. They Christianized the space they occupied, their bodies becoming houses for sanctity. While it is difficult to verify the accuracy of male representations of female subjects, discourse exposes the underlying assumptions upon which gender was understood. Reformed prostitutes, women who traveled to the shrine at Menouthis, collectors of pilgrim flasks from Abu Menas who sat in front of the Virgin Mary fresco at Kom el-Dikka, and virgins who shut themselves away--none of these women may have thought of themselves as men suggested. Yet when men referenced the feminine, they introduced alterity, indicating resistance to a master discourse or even competition among rival discourses. This negotiation, combined with a daily expression of agency through the use of space, reveals how women must have asserted their rights to salvation.