Courses That I Teach

HONR 2 Great Books and World Civilization I

HRS 4 Exploring World Religions

HRS 108 Approaches to Religious Studies

HRS 114 The Culture of Classical Rome

HRS 117 Paganism in the Roman World

HRS 119 Classical Mythology

HRS 190-290D Seminar in HRS: Death and Afterlife

HRS 190-290E Seminar in HRS: Envisioning the Divine

HRS 195 Seminar in Humanities

HRS 200A Culture and Expression: Prehistory to the Middle Ages

Select Publications

Co-author with Layne Little, Bradley Nystrom, Robert Platzner, Richard Shek, and Erin Stiles, An Invitation to the World’s Religions, Fifth Edition (revised and expanded version of Invitation to World Religions, Fourth Edition). New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

“The Aeneid, Book VI: Vergil’s Dream of the Afterlife.” Vergilius 68 (2022): 9-30.

“Theorizing the Demise of Greek and Roman Religions.” Religion & Theology 29, 1-2 (2022): 87-98.

“The Jerusalem Temple and Emperor Julian’s ‘Invention of Tradition.’” Journal of Early Christian History 10, 2 (2020): 68-81.

Co-author with Bradley Nystrom. “Exploring religious diversity in higher education,” Oxford University Press blog, posted March 7, 2018.

Review of Oren Tal and Zeev Weiss, eds., Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-Roman Period: Manifestations in Text and Material Culture (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis, 2017). In Scripta Classica Israelica (yearbook of the Israel Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies). Vol. 37 (2018), 204-206.

“Roman Religion.” In Augustine in Context. Edited by Tarmo Toom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 129-136.

Review of John Scheid, The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). In Review of Biblical Literature, https://www.bookreviews.org/BookDetail.asp?TitleId=11045

“Holocaust,” “Julian,” and “Orthopraxy.” Articles in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Edited by Eric Orlin. London: Routledge, 2016.

“World Religions.” In Vocabulary for the Study of Religion. Edited by Robert Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Fourth Edition (revised version of World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Third Edition). Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 2015.

Co-editor with Jonathan L. Reed. Rome and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue.  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.

“Religion, Roman Religion, Emperor Worship.” In Rome and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Edited by Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan L. Reed. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011, 35-48.

Select Papers and Presentations

“Divergent Valuations of Virility in Mother Goddess Worship,” paper presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, November 25, 2024.

“Aggression and the Motif of Docility in Cultic Animals of Mediterranean Antiquity,” paper presented at the IAFOR (International Academic Forum) International Conference on Arts & Humanities in Hawaii, Honolulu, January 7, 2023.

“Theorizing the Demise of Greek and Roman Religions,’” paper presented for the panel discussion Do Religions Die?, 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Antonio, November 21, 2021.

“In Honor of the 50^th Anniversary of Homo Necans,” response to four papers presented to the session Homo Necans, Homo Competens, 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Antonio, November 19, 2021

“The Theme of Docility in Cultic Animals of Mediterranean Antiquity,” paper presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (online), December 9, 2020.

“The Aeneid, Book VI: Vergil’s Dream of the Afterlife,” paper presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society of Classical Studies, San Diego, January 4, 2019.

“Julian’s Heroes: Hellenism and the Attempt to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple,” paper presented at the 2018 Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, January 10, 2018.

“The Jerusalem Temple and Emperor Julian’s ‘Invention of Tradition,’” paper presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Boston, November 18, 2017.

“Review of: An Ancient Theory of Religion: Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present (by Nickolas Roubekas),” paper presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Boston, November 18, 2017.

“Julian, Jerusalem, and the Jews,” paper presented at the CSUS 3^rd Interdisciplinary Conference in Humanities: “From Ancient to Modern,” October 28, 2017.

“Review of: The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions (ed. Barbette Stanley Spaeth),” paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, November 22, 2105.

“Sacred Killing, Sacred Dying: Religion and War in Comparative Perspective,” paper presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, November 24, 2014.

“Discerning Roman Religion in Representations of Animal Sacrifice,” paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 21, 2009.

“Defying ‘Religion’: Roman Challenges to Modern Conceptual Challenges,” papers presented (Part 1) to the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions and (Part 2) at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Rome, June 28 and July 1, 2009.