Associate Professor
PhD, University of Toronto
Ancient and Early Medieval History; Early Christianity; Social and Religious Conflict
Dr. Samuel Cohen is a historian of late antique and early medieval history, focusing on late and post-Roman Italy and the Mediterranean world. His research interests include religious controversy and the Church of Rome, social and religious conflict, episcopal authority, heresiology and polemical writing, Ostrogothic Italy, migration in Late Antiquity, and the religious topography of late antique Rome. He has published articles and book chapters on the Ostrogoths and their relationship with the Roman church, the papal biographies known as the Liber Pontificalis and its relationship to the construction of episcopal authority, religious diversity in Ostrogothic Italy, Roman martyrial cemeteries, church rededication, the reception of African migrants to Rome in the fifth century, and Roman polemical literature. He is currently working on a monograph about the rhetoric of heresy and the authority of Roman bishops in the fifth and sixth centuries. Samuel was also a 2019 Summer Research Fellow at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Kollegforschergruppe Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike at the Universität Tübingen.
Dr. Cohen has taught courses on a variety of subjects including late antique and early medieval history, the Roman Republic and Empire, Roman social history, early Christianity, histories of violence, the ‘fall of Rome,’ and tolerance and intolerance in the late antique and early medieval worlds.
Publications (articles and book chapters)
“Jurisdiction and Religious Community in late Fifth-Century Italy.” Early Medieval Europe 30.1 (2022), 1-25.
“(Re)creating Sacred Space: Gregory I and the Rededication of ‘Arian’ Church Buildings in Late Antique Rome.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 30.1 2022 [forthcoming].
“Topography and Ideology: Contested Episcopal Elections and Suburban Cemeteries in Late Antique Rome.” In Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity. Late Antique Archaeology 13, Brill 2022 [forthcoming].
“Eutychianorum furor! Heresiological Polemic and the Invention of ‘Eutychians’.” Entangled Religions, 11, vol. 4 (2020).
“You have made common cause with the Persecutors”: The Language of Persecution and the Acacian Schism." In Heirs of Roman Persecution: Studies on a Christian and para-Christian Discourse in Late Antiquity, edited by Éric Fournier and Wendy Mayer: Routledge, 2019.
“The Cemetery as a Space of Exile in Late Antique Rome.” In Forced Migration in Late Antiquity: Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, edited by Julia Hilner, Jörg Ulrich, and Jakob Engberg. Peter Lang, 2018.
“Religious Diversity." In A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, edited by Michael Shane Bjornlie, Kristina Sessa and Jonathan J. Arnold. Brill, 2016.
"Schism and the Polemic of Heresy: Manichaeism and the Representation of Papal Authority in the Liber Pontificalis." Journal of Late Antiquity 8, no. 1 (2015).
Book Reviews:
Review of Y. Fox, and E. Buchberger, eds., Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800. The Medieval Review (December, 2021).
Review of Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas and Tamar Rotman, eds., The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources. Mediterranean Studies 28 no. 2 (2020).
Review of Maya Maskarinec, City of Saints Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages. Church History 88.4 (December, 2019).
Review of Jonathan J. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration. The Classical Review (2015), 1-3.
Review of Ross Balzaretti, Dark Age Liguria: Regional Identity and Local Power c. 400-1020. The Medieval Review (March, 2015).
Presentations:
“Factionalism and Social Unrest in Late Antique Rome.” Presented (via Zoom) at the twenty-seventh International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK. July 2021.
“The Rhetoric and Reality of “foreignness” in Late Antique Roman Polemical Texts.” Presented at the XVIII International Conference on Patristics Studies, Oxford University, UK. August 2019.
“Between suburbium and City Centre: Mobility, Materiality, and Religious Controversy in Late Antique Rome.” Presented at a special panel Materialities of Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, at the twenty-sixth International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK. July 2019.
“The Cemetery as Contested Space in Late Antiquity.” Presented at the Society for Late Antiquity Panel at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University. May 9-12, 2019.
“Gregory I, Constantinople, and the Rhetoric of Suffering in the Aftermath of the Lombard Sieges of Rome, 592-593.” Presented at the 13th Biennial meeting of Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, at Claremont McKenna College. March 14-17, 2019.
“North Africans Exiles and the Bishops of Rome: Clerics, Heretics, and the Politics of Belonging in Late Antiquity.” Presented at the Micropolitics of Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Conference, held at Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. July 19-24, 2018.
“The Memory of Persecution in Late Antique Polemical Literature.” Presented at a special session on memory and Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford Medieval Studies), the twenty-fifth International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK. July 2-5, 2018.
“Memory, Rhetoric, and the Barbarians in Late Antiquity.” Invited paper presented at “Barbarians and Barbarian Kingdoms,” organized by Jonathan J. Arnold, the 53th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University. May 10-13, 2018.
“Relics and reconciliation: The Cult of Saints, and the Creation of Sacred Space in Late Antique Rome.” Presented at the 6th Hagiotheca Conference: The Saints of Rome: Diffusion and Reception from late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, held at the Hungarian Academy in Rome, Italy. October 4-6, 2017.
“Barbarians and the Problem of Exile in Late Antiquity.” Presented the 52th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University. May 14-17, 2017.
“The Bishops of Rome and the Cemetery as a Space of Exile in Late Antiquity.” Presented at Forced Movement in Late Antiquity, c. 300-700. Organized by Julia Hillner and Dirk Rohmann (University of Sheffield), held at the German Historical Institute (GHI), London. April 6-8, 2017.
“A War of Cultures? Jews and Christian Heresy in Sixth-Century Italy.” Presented at Culture Wars: The Mediterranean Seminar Winter 2017 Workshop and Late Antique and Medieval Studies (LAMS) Conference held at Pomona College. 17-18 February 2017.