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Acknowledgments Were it not for invitations to deliver papers at six special conferences, this book might not exist. Those special occasions proved to be formative for the course of research and writing that this book represents, and I am delighted to remember them here. It began with my presidential address to the North American Patristics Society in May 1997, in which I offered my first thoughts about aesthetics and bodies in late ancient Christianity. My heartfelt thanks go to the members of NAPS, not only for that special occasion but also for the many years of stimulating scholarly exchange. The train of thought regarding the odd materiality of holy bodies began when, with trepidation, I contemplated delivering the Inaugural Address to the Fourteenth International Patristics Conference at the University of Oxford in August 2003. I am grateful to the conference ’s directors, then headed by Frances Young, for honoring me with their invitation. Shortly after the Oxford conference, David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman convened a remarkable symposium on the self in ancient religions, and I thank them for providing me the occasion to articulate how the late ancient self was newly oriented toward materiality. For the genial gathering that they provided the evening before the symposium, I extend thanks to David Brakke and Bert Harrill for their hospitality. Also in 2003, the University of Utrecht, under the auspices of the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies, sponsored a colloquium entitled ‘‘Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible: 400–1000.’’ I had never contemplated the connection between mental spectacles and relics until pondering what I might contribute to this colloquium. Many thanks to the organizers, Giselle de Nie, Karl F. Morrison, Herbert Kessler, and Marco Mostert, for this rich experience. Finally, two conferences held in 2006 pushed me to extend my thoughts about holy bodies to icons as well as to imagine those bodies in different theoretical terms. My compliments to Virginia Burrus, Catherine Keller, and Christopher Boesel of Drew University’s Theological School for coming up with the most tantalizingly provocative colloquium title I have ever encountered (‘‘Apophatic Bodies: Infinity, Ethics, and Incarnation’’). It was a joy to participate in this, the sixth of 262 Acknowledgments Drew’s Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia, and I offer special thanks to Karmen MacKendrick of Le Moyne College, whose insightful response to my paper helped me hone my thoughts about subtle bodies. Last, and in some ways best, of all, I acknowledge with gratitude my colleagues in our regional association, LARCNY (Late Ancient Religion in Central New York). They asked me to be the keynote speaker at our first conference, ‘‘Bodies and Boundaries in Late Antiquity,’’ and then surprised me at the last minute by telling me that the conference was in my honor. It was an unforgettable experience. My best regards go to Kim Haines-Eitzen, whose arrangements at Cornell University made the conference possible, and to Georgia Frank, Jennifer Glancy, Anne Meredith, Gay Byron, and Suzanne Abrams. My LARCNY colleagues are one of the best features of academic life in upstate New York. Thanks also to friends who traveled to Cornell to give papers at the conference: David Brakke, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Clark, David Frankfurter, and Derek Krueger. A fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2006–7 supported the writing of this book, and I am deeply grateful for the time to think that a year’s leave provides. The Arts and Sciences Subvention Fund of Syracuse University, along with the Department of Religion, provided funds to cover the expenses of art-permissions and indexing. Special thanks go to Gerald Greenberg, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Tazim Kassam, Chair of the Department of Religion, for their generous support. The staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press, especially Jerome Singerman, have been unfailingly gracious, and the editors of the Divinations series, Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, and Derek Krueger, have been collegially encouraging throughout. Virginia read the entire manuscript with an imaginatively critical eye, which was a great help at a crucial moment. At the end of all these thank-yous, words are not really adequate to express my appreciation to my husband, David L. Miller, for the extraordinary gift of his intelligent reading of my pages, day by day, as they emerged from the printer; my love to him. Portions of this book appeared in earlier forms in other publications. Chapter 1 is a longer version of ‘‘Shifting Selves in...

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