Distinguished Visitor (September-December 2014)
Professor Conybeare was hosted by CMS and PIMS as the John Bennett Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the fall term of 2014.
Catherine Conybeare is fast becoming one of the foremost revisionary readers of Augustine of Hippo, and of the Latin texts of late antiquity more generally. Drawing on her philological training from Oxford, her medieval training from Toronto, and her wide reading in feminist theoretical approaches – especially those deriving from Hannah Arendt’s “natality” and from feminist philosophy of religion – she has published on topics ranging from aurality to violence, and on authors from Avitus to Prudentius. Her books emphasize the living dynamics of language, from letters (Paulinus Noster, 2000) to dialogues (The Irrational Augustine, 2006) to the very edge of language, laughter (The Laughter of Sarah, 2013). While in Toronto, she was starting a new project on Augustine as an African; she had also just been commissioned by Routledge to write a guidebook to the Confessions.
While in Toronto, Catherine Conybeare gave a lecture entitled “An Eccentric Approach to Augustine of Hippo” on November 14, 2014. She also gave the O’Donnell Lecture in Medieval Latin Studies, “Augustine the African”, on November 21, 2014.