Syracuse 2023 Call for Papers
Ethnography, Paradoxography, and Heresiology: Three Genres in Interaction
By describing what is foreign, strange, and exotic, ancient ethnographers and paradoxographers define what is ordinary, normal, and expected. The same distinction is also the impetus of the heresiological genre, which describes heresies in contrast to a prescribed orthodoxy. Thereby, it appears that heresiology takes up principles from ethnographic and paradoxographical literature in compiling catalogues of strange and aberrant customs. For the 2023 conference, we especially invite papers that explore this interaction between genres. Papers can, for instance, study descriptions of other Christian communities as foreign peoples, depictions of nonstandard liturgies as exotic customs, or angels, demons, or monsters as the instigators of heresies. Papers interacting with paradoxography in other ways are also welcome.
