Aliens and Sojourners: Self as Other in Early Christianity

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of numerous people and institutions. First and foremost, I wish to thank Karen L. King. Karen has been a rigorous but always encouraging mentor, and I cannot imagine this book without her. Her insights have influenced and improved the project from beginning to end. I also want to thank François Bovon of Harvard University and Ellen Aitken of McGill University, both of whom read versions of the manuscript at a much earlier stage and offered invaluable feedback that propelled the project forward. In later phases of my research, I benefited from the kindness of numerous colleagues who were willing to read and comment on the entire manuscript in something closer to its current form. These include Daniel Boyarin, Denise Buell, Virginia Burrus, Bob Davis, Stephen Dunning, Amy Hollywood, and Jennifer Knust. I am grateful for their critiques and suggestions and have done my best to incorporate as many of their recommendations as possible. I especially want to thank Virginia Burrus for serving as a stimulating and challenging conversation partner and Amy Hollywood for helping me navigate a crucial theoretical shift in the project. Various seminars and public forums have offered me the opportunity to present different portions of this research. These include talks and presentations at Drew University, Fordham University, Harvard Divinity School, Muhlenberg College, and various sections of the Society of Biblical Literature at the New England, national, and international meetings. I am grateful for all the feedback, helpful critique, and encouragement that I received in these various venues. Portions of this book were previously published in different form. Material from the introduction and Chapter One appeared in “Strangers and Aliens No Longer: Negotiating Identity and Different in Ephesians 2,” HTR 99 (2006): 1–16. Chapter Two was published in a somewhat modified form as “The Intersection of Alien Status and Cultic Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews” in Gabriella Gelardini, ed. Hebrews: Contemporary Methods -- New Insights (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 177–198. Thanks to Harvard Theological Review and Koninklijke Brill N.V. for their permission to reprint this material here. Jerry Singerman, Alison Anderson, the editorial board of Divinations, and the staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press have been a pleasure to work with throughout. I am indebted to them for their interest in the project and the numerous ways in which they have helped me navigate the ins and outs of the publishing process. In addition, there are numerous friends and colleagues from various institutional contexts that have supported me in this work. While I cannot hope to be exhaustive, Carly Daniel-Hughes, Susanna Drake, Brent Landau, Taylor Petrey, and Charles Stang all deserve special mention for the ways that they have helped with different aspects of this project. During the year I spent teaching at Harvard College, I was supported by a fantastic group of colleagues in the Study of Religion including Carole Bundy, Tamsin Jones, Tal Lewis (now of Brown University), and Robert Orsi (now of Northwestern University), Since relocating to New York City, my colleagues in Fordham University ’s Theology Department have provided a wonderful institutional home and intellectual community. Throughout the year I spent at the Rose Hill campus, Mary Callaway, Christophe Chalamet, George Demacopoulos , Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Brad Hinze, Christine Firer Hinze, and Mark Massa all went out of their way to reach out to me and smooth my transition to a new academic environment. I am also grateful to my chair, Terry Tilley, for his tireless work on behalf of junior faculty. In my new home at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, I have joined an outstanding group of colleagues who love to bring intellectual engagement together with the fun of living in New York. I am especially grateful for the emotional support and friendship of Karina Hogan, Terry Klein, Maureen O’Connell, and Telly Papanikolaou. Thanks also to Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for an Ames Fund Grant for Junior Faculty that helped subsidize some of this book’s production costs. On a personal note, I want to thank my parents, Roxy and Stephen Dunning, and my siblings, Sarah and David, for their support and love throughout the many transitions that took place for me during the writing of this project. Thanks also to Ashley Dunning who has been one of my best friends as I wrote this book and continues to be so. She more than anyone understands what is at...