Mike Chin

A photo of Professor Chin standing in front of a green lawn

Associate Professor of Classics
Chair of Graduate Designated Emphasis
Post Baccalaureate Advisor

he/him
413 Sproul Hall
Office Hours
Spring: On fellowship

Education and Degree(s):

  • Ph.D., Duke University, 2005
  • M.A., Duke University, 2000
  • M.St., Oxford University, 1996
  • B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995

About

Research Interests:

  • Late ancient social and intellectual history; conceptions of the natural and the wondrous in antiquity
  • Literary cultures of late antiquity and the early middle ages
  • Performance, ritual, and performing objects in late antiquity
  • Premodern notions of gender, sexuality, and the body

Courses Taught:

  • CLA 003 Rome and the Ancient Mediterranean World
  • CLA 004 Late Antiquity
  • CLA 190 (senior seminar) Race and Classical Antiquity
  • CLA 200A The World is Old: Approaches to the Classical Past
  • LAT 112 Cicero
  • LAT 130 Later Latin
  • RST/JST 40 New Testament
  • RST 102 Christian Origins
  • IST 8C Religion and the Cosmos: Plato to C.S. Lewis

 

Profile:

I'm interested in how late ancient people imagined their world(s), and in the techniques they used--scientific, artistic, literary, religious--to more fully describe and inhabit the worlds that they imagined living in.  I'm also interested in how we can re-imagine those worlds today, and so my work explores different techniques that we can use, from literary composition to installation art to puppetry and object performance, in order to have a contemporary version of the kinds of imaginative experiences that late ancient people had.

 

Please Note: I am not accepting graduate students at this time.

Policy on Letters of Recommendation

 

Selected Publications:

"After Post, or, Animal Religion in an Age of Extinction," Ancient Jew Review, May 29, 2018 (link)

"Marvelous Things Heard: On Finding Historical Radiance," The Massachusetts Review 58.3 (2017): 478-91 (pdf)

Melania: Early Christianity Through the Life of One Family, co-edited with Caroline T. Schroeder, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016

Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, co-edited with Moulie Vidas, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015

Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.