Emily Cain, PhD
Associate Professor
Emily Cain completed her Ph.D in the History of Christianity at Fordham University (2016) and her M.Div at Princeton Theological Seminary (2007). Her teaching and research focus on the social history of Christianity in the Ancient Mediterranean world, with a special emphasis on Women’s and Gender Studies and Medicine, Health, and Disability.
Her first book, Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God (Oxford 2023), explores discussions of vision and knowledge in the Ancient Mediterranean world. She argues that ancient authors use the rhetoric and metaphor of vision and mirrors to construct different anthropologies (what humans can do), sociologies (how humans interact with each other), and theologies (how humans engage with God). Along the way, she also uncovers patterns and assumptions about flawed or disabled bodies, sometimes portrayed as a hindrance to knowledge of God and other times as the very source of that knowledge.
She is currently working on a second monograph, Late Ancient Women and the Men Who Wrote Them, which analyzes texts from the 1st through 5th centuries in which male authors cast their theologies in the metaphors, voices, and characters of women. She reveals that gender in antiquity is not a simple hierarchy of masculinity over femininity. Rather, authors utilize gender in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways to work both inside and outside cultural bounds as they craft their theologies.
Emily is always interested in what lies beneath the surface as she seeks to uncover the assumptions that ancient authors and modern readers bring to their texts.
Education
Ph.D, Theology, Fordham University, 2016.
M.Div, Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007.
Research Interests
Christianities in Late Antiquity, Mystical Theologies, Epistemology, Rhetoric, Metaphor, Gender and Sexuality in Late Antiquity, Disability
Professional/Community Affiliations
Society of Biblical Literature, American Academy of Religion, North American Patristics Society, ReMeDHe (Religion, Medicine, and Disability, and Health in Antiquity)
Publications/Research Listings
Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.
“Perfected Perception: Modes of Knowing God in Clement of Alexandria.” Studia Patristica CX, Vol. 7, ed. Markus Vinzent et al. Leuven: Peeters, 2021: 167-175.
“Mystical Wounds: Eastern Patristic Authors on the Song of Songs.” ed. Timothy Robinson, Song of Songs in Christian Spirituality. Companion to the Song of Songs in Christian History. Leiden: Brill, 2021: 18-41.
“Tertullian’s Precarious Panopticon: A Performance of Visual Piety.” Journal of Early Christian Studies. 27.4. (Winter 2019), 611-633.
“Medically Modified Eyes: A Baptismal Cataract Surgery in Clement of Alexandria.” Studies in Late Antiquity. 2.4. (Winter 2018), 491-511.
Awards
2024 Sujack Research Award, “Master Researcher.” Loyola University Chicago.
2023 Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage Course Development Grant for “Lost Women of the Catholic Imagination,” Loyola University Chicago
2022 Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage Course Development Grant for “The (Dis)Abled Body in Catholic Thought,” Loyola University Chicago.
2021 Runner-Up, Provost’s Award for Teaching Freshmen, Loyola University Chicago
2020-2021 Lilly Endowment Funded Grant, “First Do No Harm: Trauma Informed Pedagogy in the Non-Traditional Classroom,” Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.
2019-2020 Lilly Endowment Funded Grant, Early Career Faculty Teaching Undergraduates, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.