Site Index
Religious Studies
128A. Religion and Spirituality in the Roman Empire (4)
Introduction to "pagan" spirituality: rites marking the seasonal and life cycles, syncretism and multiculturalism, initiation into religious associations, dreams and oracles, with attention both to religious texts and to the symbolic, iconographic, and structural evidence offered by archaeological data.
128C. Sacred Geography (4)
A survey of religious sites in polytheism and early Christianity. After general introduction to the sites, the topos of sacred space and ritual, and the methods of secondary research for archaeological materials, students produce audiovisual presentations in seminar format.
Instructor Bio
Christine M. Thomas, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies
Educated in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Minnesota and the Eberhardt-Karls Universität, in Tübingen, Germany, Christine M. Thomas took a Ph.D. in the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 1995. After a junior fellowship with the Society of Fellows at Harvard (1993-96), she joined the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is an Associate Professor. Her areas of interest include the religions of the Roman Empire (traditional polytheism, ancient Judaism, early Christianity), early Christian literature and culture, the Christian Apocrypha, and archaeology and the study of religion. A veteran of annual archaeological campaigns in Turkey since 1991, she currently directs excavation projects in Ephesos and Metropolis near Smyrna (Izmir). She has six books in print (two authored, one edited, three translated) and fourteen articles, primarily on the Christian apocrypha and the religions of ancient Asia Minor. She lives in Goleta with her husband, also a professor at UCSB (in Spanish and Portuguese), a young son, and a large and idle cat.