Overview
Books and bodies, women and books, and the malleable word and flesh lie thematically at the center of The Gendered Palimpsest, which explores the roles that women played in the production, reproduction, and dissemination of early Christian books, and how the representation of female characters was contested through the medium of writing and copying. The book is organized in two sections, the first of which treats historical questions: To what extent were women authors, scribes, book-lenders, and patrons of early Christian literature? How should we understand the representation of women readers in ascetic literature? The second section of the book turns to text-critical questions: How and why were stories of women modified in the process of copying? And how did debates about asceticism--and, more specifically, the human body--find their way into the textual transmission of canonical and apocryphal literature? Throughout the book, Haines-Eitzen uses the notion of a palimpsest in its broadest sense to highlight the problems of representation, layering, erasure, and reinscription. In doing so, she provides a new dimension to the gendered history of early Christianity.
Full Product Details
Author: Kim Haines-Eitzen (H. Stanley Krusen Professor of World Religions, H. Stanley Krusen Professor of World Religions, Cornell University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 22.90cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 16.00cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780195171297
ISBN 10: 0195171292
Pages: 214
Publication Date: 08 December 2011
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
<br> After you read The Gendered Palimpsest, you'll never read early Christian literature in quite the same way again. Drawing on her skills in textual criticism, papyrology, social history, and gender studies, Kim Haines-Eitzen helps us to see ancient texts not simply as static words on a page, but as dynamic material productions perennially subject to human alteration. If you want to learn about the roles that women played in composing, copying, transmitting, owning, and reading books-and about the ways that controversial female figures in the early church were edited and censured by (male) scribes-this is the place to start. -- Stephen Davis, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University <br><br><p><br> A lucid, elegant, illuminating tour of the textual and material evidence for ancient Christian women readers, authors, scribes, copyists, literary patrons and disseminators of books. With its fresh, text-critical perspective on representations of women's participation in ancient Christian book culture, and some of the plausible underlying social realities, Kim Haines-Eitzen's The Gendered Palimpsest renders more legible the previously obscured and overwritten ancient discourses about women, bodies and books. -- Ross S. Kraemer, Department of Religious Studies and Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University <br><p><br> Kim Haines-Eitzen's The Gendered Palimpsest is a marvelous study. The evidence she has collected to document women as scribes and readers will change both how we think about early Christian women and how we think about the role of books in early Christian communities. Practical questions about who had access to the skills and materials to make books turn out to have surprising answers, and make for a lively story of women's contribution to the early Christian movement. -- Kate Cooper, Professor of Ancient History, University of Manchester <br><p><br>
The book is written in a lively and witty style which engages the reader and draws her into the world which Haines-Eitzen describes. * Morwenna Ludlow, University of Exeter *
After you read The Gendered Palimpsest, you'll never read early Christian literature in quite the same way again. Drawing on her skills in textual criticism, papyrology, social history, and gender studies, Kim Haines-Eitzen helps us to see ancient texts not simply as static words on a page, but as dynamic material productions perennially subject to human alteration. If you want to learn about the roles that women played in composing, copying, transmitting, owning, and reading books-and about the ways that controversial female figures in the early church were edited and censured by (male) scribes-this is the place to start. -- Stephen Davis, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University A lucid, elegant, illuminating tour of the textual and material evidence for ancient Christian women readers, authors, scribes, copyists, literary patrons and disseminators of books. With its fresh, text-critical perspective on representations of women's participation in ancient Christian book culture, and some of the plausible underlying social realities, Kim Haines-Eitzen's The Gendered Palimpsest renders more legible the previously obscured and overwritten ancient discourses about women, bodies and books. -- Ross S. Kraemer, Department of Religious Studies and Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University Kim Haines-Eitzen's The Gendered Palimpsest is a marvelous study. The evidence she has collected to document women as scribes and readers will change both how we think about early Christian women and how we think about the role of books in early Christian communities. Practical questions about who had access to the skills and materials to make books turn out to have surprising answers, and make for a lively story of women's contribution to the early Christian movement. -- Kate Cooper, Professor of Ancient History, University of Manchester
Author Information
Kim Haines-Eitzen's primary expertise is in early Christianity and early Judaism; she currently holds the H. Stanley Krusen Professorship of World Religions at Cornell University, where she is Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Religious Studies Program. She is the author of Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature.
