We have recently accepted several fabulous Graduate Affiliates. We want to introduce our Graduate Affiliates by giving everyone a sneak peek at their upcoming projects!
Arif Erbil
Arif is an M. A. student in the History department at Boğaziçi University studying sixteenth-century Ottoman political thought. He will be joining the Graduate Program in Religion at Duke University in the Fall ‘21. His project, Arabic MS 45: “Islamic Devotional Book,” explores the origins of this manuscript.
Elizabeth Schrader
Elizabeth is a doctoral student in the Religion department, studying Early Christianity with a focus on New Testament textual criticism and women in the Gospels. Her project, “Investigating the Kenneth Willis Clark Collection of Greek Manuscripts,” will specifically look at Greek MS 065, a New Testament Byzantine Gospel lectionary dated to the eleventh century. She is also a TA for “Pneumatology: Global Perspectives on the Holy Spirit.”
Jonathan Homrighausen
Jonathan is a doctoral student in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament track, studying the material reception of biblical texts. He is working with Noam Sienna on their project, “The Motley Migrations of Duke’s Hebrew Manuscripts.” They plan to investigate the provenance of Duke’s Hebrew manuscripts collection.
Maroun El Houkayem
Maroun is a doctoral student in the graduate program in Religion (Early Christianity track) focusing primarily on the formation of Arabic Christianity as a result of the contacts between early Muslims and Syriac Christians. His project, “Investigating Duke’s Arabic Papyri” discusses primarily the Arabic papyri collection found at the Rubenstein Library.
Matthew Naiman
Matthew is currently a law student at Duke studying for his J.D. At the lab, he is researching norms, ethics, and laws surrounding manuscript fragment creation, sale, and collection. His project, “The Paper Chase: A Legal and Ethical Analysis of Manuscript Fragment Collecting in the United States” examines the legal and ethical issues surrounding the creation, sale, and collection of manuscript fragments.
Michael Freeman
Michael is a doctoral student in the Department of Classical Studies with academic interests in papyrology, social and intellectual history, and ancient education. His project, “Re-used Papyrus, ‘On the flip side’ explores the use of re-used papyrus for Greek scribal training in Roman Egypt. He is currently teaching Latin 101.
Nathan Tilley
Nathan is a doctoral student in Religious Studies studying conceptions of human nature in the thought of Babai the Great. His project, “Bibliophilia, Orientalism, and the Making of Liberal Protestantism in the Manuscripts of George Ehlhardt at Duke University” examines the shifting meaning of George Brinkmann Ehlhardt’s manuscripts in the context of his construction of Protestant identity in the mid-20th century.
Noam Sienna
Noam is a scholar of medieval and early modern Jewish history in the Islamic world, with a particular interest in material culture. He finished his Ph.D. in Jewish History and Museum Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2020. He is working with Jonathan on “The Motley Migrations of Duke’s Hebrew Manuscripts.”
Sinja Küppers
Sinja is a doctoral student in Classical Studies studying the social history of Higher Education in the Roman Empire. Her project investigates the history of the Duke Papyrus Collection. She is currently teaching Latin 101.
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