New Books in History Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)
47 snips
Nov 11, 2025 
Ellen Muehlberger, a Professor of History at the University of Michigan, explores the intimate knowledge ancient peoples had of one another in her new work. She discusses how public culture and rituals reinforced Christian power in late antiquity, and examines the social dynamics behind classroom role-playing and male dominance. Muehlberger tackles fascinating concepts like the 'Superfather' in early church authority, and how crowd surveillance served as evidence of belief, while also emphasizing the challenges and joys of presenting historical narratives.
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Classroom Characters Become Cultural Scripts
- Practicing speeches as a prostitute or eunuch makes those character-types persist in students' minds.
- That persistence lets listeners dismiss real women as 'just like' the classroom stereotype.
Doubt Fuels Epistemic Policing
- Bishops created catechetical courses to define Christian identity, but still doubted people's true beliefs.
- That doubt produced practices that sought external signs of inner faith rather than trusting ritual alone.
Searching Houses For Christian Signs
- Bishop Shenouda famously broke into villagers' houses to search for ritual objects and justify intervention.
- Leaders treated domestic property as evidence standing in for a person's inner belief.
