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Luis Josu矇 釦硃梭矇莽,

Associate Professor of Religious Studies; Chair, Faculty Executive Committee
Religious Studies
[email protected]

Office Location: Miller 103

Office Hours: Thursday 11-13

泭

Biography

I am a native of Mexico City who specializes in premodern African, Asian, and eastern European Christianities. I largely apply postcolonial, feminist, and queer theoretical approaches to my scholarship and integrate them into my teaching. My interests center on the construction of premodern Christian identities, particularly at the intersection of sexual, religious, and ethnic difference.

Academic History

  • PhD-Fordham University: History of Christianity (Early/Medieval)
  • ThM-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology: Patristics
  • MTS-Boston College: Early Christian Studies
  • MA-Wheaton College: Systematic and Historical Theology
  • BA-Wheaton College: English Writing (Poetry); Political Science (Constitutional Law)

Academic Focus

  • Eastern Orthodox Christianity
  • Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Premodern Christianity
  • Women in Early Christianity
  • Ancient African Christianities (Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia)
  • Christianity in Sasanian Persia
  • Eastern Roman Empire
  • Early Christian-Muslim Relations
  • Postcolonial/Decolonial Theory
  • Early Christian Ethics

Interests

Cooking, baking, and gardening

Courses Taught

  • Feminist Interpretations of the Bible
  • Intro to Early Christianities
  • God on Trial: Free Will and Evil
  • Queer African Christianities
  • Christianity, Capital, and Communism
  • Early Christian-Muslim Relations
  • Jesus, Paul, and Early Christian Sexualities
  • Eros and Sex: Antiquity and Byzantium
  • Precolonial African Christian Spiritualities
  • CORE A: Christian Herstory: 4BCE-1,000CE
  • CORE III: Not Your Sunday School Christianity

Books

Monographs:
Luis Josu矇 釦硃梭矇莽, Maximos the Confessor: Androprimacy and Sexual Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Book-length Translations:
. Saint Maximus the Confessor: Four Hundred Chapters on Love. Popular Patristics Series TBD. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2025. [GreekEnglish]

. Gabriel Bunge: Spiritual Fatherhood, Evagrius Ponticus on the Role of the Spiritual Father. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2016. [GermanEnglish]

. Saint Maximus the Confessor: Two Hundred Chapters on Theology. Popular Patristics Series vol. 53. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2015. [GreekEnglish]

Selected Research and Publications

    釦硃梭矇莽, Luis Josu矇. Hypostasis as Theophany in the Theology of Maximos the Confessor, in Subsidia Maximiana 4, (forthcoming).

    . Her Body Is Sacred Scripture: An Eastern Orthodox Theology of Womens Reproductive Self-Determination, in Reproductive Justice and the Bible. Jennifer Koosed and Katy Valentine, eds. Feminist Studies and Sacred Texts, vol. TBD. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (forthcoming).

    . Colonial Ideology and Intellectual Hybridity in the Invention of Neoplatonism, in Essays in Long Late Antiquity 1.1 (forthcoming).

    . Orthodox Abortions, Catholic Contraceptives: Christian Womens Reproductive Autonomy in the Medieval Roman Empire, in Reproductive Justice after Roe: Lessons from the Premodern Classroom. Maeve Callan and Emma Maggie Solberg, eds. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, Medieval Institute Publications, vol. TBD (forthcoming).

    . Maximos the Confessors Correspondence with Egyptian Women: A Translation of Letters 11 and 18 with Introduction and Critical Commentary, in Subsidia Maximiana 3, 2025 (at press).

    . Paul and Pseudo-Paul: Authorship, Ideology, and the Difference of Androprimacy, in Religions 15.9 (2024): 115.

    . Ritualized Affective Drama: Syriac Etiquette Guides and Systems Intelligence in Early Christian-Muslim Encounters, in Religions 14.11 (2023): 117.

    . On the Commemoration of Saint Pelagios of Jerusalem, in Parole de lOrient 49 (2023): 191 216.

    . Androprimacy: A New Analytical Concept for the Study of Gender and Religion with Case Studies from the Ethiopic Didsqlya and the Greek Apostolic Constitutions, in Gender and Religion 13 (2022): 195213.

    . Systems Intelligence and Byzantine Domestic Violence: The Life of Matrona of Perge as a Case Study, in Studia Patristica 124 (2021): 2941.

    . Timeo hiberos et cruces ferentes: Jesuit Missiology as Iberian Colonialism in Early Modern Abyssinia, in Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace. Scott Oldenburg and Kristin Bezio, eds. London and New York: Routledge (2021): 151171.

    . Queerly Christified Bodies: Women Martyrs, Christification, and the Compulsory Masculinisation Thesis, in The Journal of Early Christian History 10.3 (2020): 83109.

    . To Kill a Matriarchy: Makdda, Queen of Ethiopia and the Specter of Pauline Androprimacy in the Kbr瓣 N瓣g瓣t, in African Journal of Gender and Religion 26.1 (2020): 4976.

    . The Other Life of Maximos the Confessor: A Reevaluation of the Syriac and Greek Lives and the Case for His Alexandrian Origin, in The Journal of Late Antiquity 13.2 (2020): 407439.

    . Galatians 3:28 and the Ordination of Women in Second-Century Pauline Churches, in Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice. Elena Narinskaya and Gabrielle Thomas, eds. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books (2020): 5876.

    . Can These Bones Live?: Gregory of Nyssas Appropriation of Aristotelian Psychology in On the Soul and the Resurrection, in Sacris Erudiri: A Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Christianity 56 (2017): 3363.

    . Aristotelian as a Lingua Franca: Rationality in Christian Self-Representation under the Abbasids, in Studia Patristica 92 (2017): 453464.

    (with Aristotle Papanikolaou). A Power that Deifies Humanity and Humanizes God: The Psychodynamics of Love and Hypostatic Deification according to Maximos the Confessor, in The International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 78.12 (2017): 2338.

    . Virtue Will Bind the Wounds of Your Soul: Yahy ibn Ad蘋 and The Love of All Humans under the Abbasids, in Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness in Eastern Orthodox Perspectives. Lev Smith, ed. New York, NY: Theotokos Press (2015): 8492.

    . Maximos and Neurobiology: A Neurotheological Investigation of Asceticism as Erosion of the Passions and the Gnomic Will, in Orthodox Monasticism: Past and Present. John A. McGuckin, ed. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press (2014): 324331.

    . Divine Incarnation through the Virtues: The Central Soteriological Role of Maximos the Confessors Aretology, Saint Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 58.2 (2014): 159176.

Awards and Honors

Mary Johnson Award for Research: 2020-2021, 2022-2023