"Generative Authority" | FWF Start Award 2024The GenAut Project hosts a monthly online research seminar with papers from scholars that work on these traditions from other perspectives or on different languages than our project. | The papers are (usually) at 4pm CET; all welcome!
The seminar is open to all – just drop us a line to danb76@univie.ac.at. If you work on any figure linked in some way to an apostolic figure and are interested in collaborating for the seminar, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We would love to hear from you.
The list of characters linked to the apostles in these traditions includes no only Thecla of Iconium, Dionysius the Areopagite, Clement of Rome, but also figures like Pancratius of Taormina, Onesimus of Byzantium, Nereus and Achilleus, and Mary Magdalene.
The 2026 theme, GenAut figures in cultic contexts, is curated by Maria S. Thomas.
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The 2025 theme:
The construction of GenAut characters in relation to the apostles
Marianna Cerno (Udine) | May 28
• Gesta sancti Clementis: An Unknown Fragment of the Pseudo-Clementine Novel
Amber Ivanov (Sofia) | June 3
• The Character of Paul in the Slavic Acts of Thecla
Maria Thomas (Amsterdam) | June 24
• Mary Magdalene in a Twelfth-Century Syriac Fenqitho Manuscripts from Jerusalem
Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski (London) | August 20 (10 am CET)
• Why do Christians suffer? An answer from the Letter of Peter to Philip
Ángel Narro (València) | September 10
• Thecla’s Increasing Authority from Early Christianity to Late Antiquity
Joost Hagen (Leipzig) | September 22
• The sidestory about the little disciples of the apostles in the Coptic Installation of the Archangel Michael
Jonathon Lookadoo (Seoul) | October 16 (10 am CET)
• The Authoritative Potential of Ignatius of Antioch in the Ignatian Martyrdom Tradition
Chance Bonar (Virginia) | October 28 (1 pm CET)
• Onesimus: Apostle and Martyr in Eastern Mediterranean Literature
Rocio Daga-Portillo (Munich) | November 21 (12 pm CET)
• Clement of Rome as authority in the Arabic Nomocanon of the Copts
Janet Spittler (Virginia) | December 16
• Prochorus: Sidekick and Scribe