The Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity (CSLA) fosters interdisciplinary discussion and cooperation among University members who study the period extending from 200 to 800 CE in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Comprised of specialists in history, classics, religion, art and archaeology, and Near Eastern studies, the CSLA provides a forum for discussion among students, faculty, visiting scholars, and members of the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton Theological Seminary. The committee also organizes a program of public lectures, often in collaboration with other departments and programs.
The CSLA is under the aegis of the Council of the Humanities.
Announcements - 2023
Emily Chesley, a graduate student in the Department of History, won the prize for her paper "Gendered Responses to Military Violence in Late Antique Mesopotamia: A View from Syriac Sermons". The prize is given annually to the best graduate student essay on any subject relating to the study of Late Antiquity.
Twelve hundred years ago, a scribe in a secluded monastery took a piece of parchment laboriously inscribed with a religious text—and erased it.
Parchment was scarce in the Egyptian desert during the medieval era, prompting the erasure and reuse of manuscripts.
Beneath the new writing, however, traces of the original…