Saint Augustine: From Africa to Pope Leo

About the Panel

The Center for the Study of Politics and Governance hosts a panel with Augustine scholar Catherine Conybeare (Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College). St. Augustine forged the sacred foundations of Western Christianity – from original sin to God’s grace. Pope Leo’s spiritual home is in the Augustinian religious order. Augustine was born in Africa and his identity as an African permeates his founding role in Christianity’s beginnings. Conybeare’s Augustine the African tells his life story, revealing profound questions about Christianity and identity that bear on contemporary debates about race.

Professor Conybeare is joined by University of Minnesota scholars of premodern religion and contemporary debates about race including Andrew Gallia (History), Dwight K. Lewis Jr. (Philosophy), and Andrea Sterk (History).

About the Panelists

Catherine Conybeare is the Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College. A specialist in late antiquity, her work focuses on Augustine of Hippo, as well as themes of aurality, emotion, violence, and the self in the ancient world. She is the author of several books, including The Irrational Augustine and The Laughter of Sarah, and has published widely on classical and late antique literature. Her upcoming biography, Augustine the African, reframes Augustine’s intellectual life through his North African identity. Professor Conybeare has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the ACLS, and currently directs the Cultures of Latin series for Cambridge University Press.

Andrew Gallia is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Minnesota. His research specializes in the Roman Empire, classical civilizations, and cultural history. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Classics at Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dwight K. Lewis Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and the Stephen R. Setterberg, M.D., Faculty Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. He is also a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Canon Expansion and Change. His research focuses on concepts of human difference—including race, gender, sexuality, and decoloniality—as well as early modern philosophy, Africana philosophy, and the philosophy of race. He is currently completing a book on Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first African to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at a European university, forthcoming from Hackett Publishing. In addition to his academic work, Professor Lewis is committed to public philosophy and expanding the philosophical canon through scholarship, teaching, and outreach.

Andrea Sterk is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, where she specializes in the history of Christianity in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. She is the author of Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (Harvard, 2004), which explores the tensions between ascetic renunciation and ecclesiastical leadership. She has also co-edited Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity (Cornell, 2014) and compiled the sourcebook Readings in World Christian History: Earliest Christianity to 1453 (Orbis, 2004). Her current book project examines eastern Christian mission and grassroots Christianization along the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. Professor Sterk is a core faculty member in Religious Studies, affiliated with the Center for Medieval Studies and the Center for Premodern Studies, and serves as editor of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture.