Dawn LaValle Norman

Education

• Ph.D. Classics and Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, June 2015
  • Visiting Student with the Classics Faculty, University of Oxford (Corpus Christi College), 2012-2013 
• M.A. Classics and Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, 2012
• M.A. Early Christian Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2007
• A.B. Classics and Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, University of Chicago, 2005
  • With honors in both concentrations and general honors

Specialties

Imperial Literature, Late Antiquity, Early Christianity, dialogue literature, women philosophers, the Platonic literary tradition, history of science.

Research Interests

My research investigates Christian literature as it emerged and grew in confidence from the 1^st-5^th centuries CE. I am especially interested in who counts as an intellectual or philosopher during this time (with a special interest in gender), what types of topics these intellectuals claimed expertise on (including medical knowledge), and how they constructed their arguments. Much of my research has focused on a way of writing philosophy that blended it with drama—the philosophical dialogue. Recently, my research has turned to questions of ancient Christian understandings of the natural world, with a particular interest in plants and the wakeful night.

Before coming to Baylor, I was a researcher at Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry for 7 years and a post-doctoral fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford in Classics. I have concurrently held long-term visiting fellowships at the University of Utrecht, Cambridge University and Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities.

Publications

Monographs

• Early Christian Women. For Cambridge Elements Series ‘Women in the History of Philosophy’. (Cambridge University Press 2022). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009047067, ISBN: 9781009045889
• The Aesthetics of Hope in Late Imperial Greek Literature: Methodius of Olympus’ Symposium and the Crisis of the Third Century. Series: Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press 2019) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657389
• Co-Editor (with Alex Petkas), Hypatia of Alexandria: Her Context and Legacy (Mohr Siebeck 2020)

Articles

• “The Spaces of Male Grooming in 2^nd-3^rd century Mediterranean” for a Cluster on ‘Cultivating and Contesting the Spiritual Meaning of Male Hair” in Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 56, no. 1 (forthcoming 2026).
• “Mark’s Mothers and the Matronymic: Linking ‘the Son of Mary’ (Mk 6.3) to ‘the Daughter of Herodias’ (Mk 6.22)”, New Testament Studies 71.1 (forthcoming spring 2025).
• “Matronymics at Work: Female Succession Techniques in Lucian’s Dialogi Meretricii and Some Early Thecla Literature”, Classical Philology 119.3 (July 2024). https://doi.org/10.1086/730584
• “Contesting Aristotle: Science, Theology and the Resurrection of the Body in Methodius of Olympus’ De Resurrectione and the Dialogue of Adamantius”, Vigiliae Christianae 76.2 (2022): 121-143.
• “Becoming Female: Marrowy Semen and the Formative Mother in Methodius of Olympus’ Symposium”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 27.2 (Summer 2019): 185-209.
• “Feasting at the End: The Eschatological Symposia of Methodius of Olympus and Julian the Apostate”, Studia Patristica 94, Vol. 20 (2017): 269-284.
• “Divine Breastfeeding: Milk, Blood and Pneuma in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus”, Journal of Late Antiquity 8.2 (Fall 2015), 322-336.

Chapters

Published:

• “Identification and Distance in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans: Subjects and their Absences” in The Cambridge Companion to Lucian, ed. Simon Goldhill (CUP 2024), 297-317.
• “Permission to Speak? Cleobulina/Eumetis in Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages and Mary in the Pistis Sophia,” in Plutarch and His Contemporaries: Sharing the Roman Empire, ed. Katarzyna Jażdżewska and Filip Doroszewski. Brill’s Plutarch Studies, Volume 14 (Brill 2024): 335-351. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687301_024
• “Female Characters as Modes of Knowing in Late Imperial Dialogues: The Body, Desire, and the Intellectual Life” in The Intellectual World of Christian Late Antique Christianity: Reshaping the Classical Tradition, 100-600 CE. Edited by Lewis Ayres, Matthew Crawford and Michael Champion (CUP 2023): 347-365.
• “Courtroom Rhetoric in Imperial and Late Antique Philosophical Dialogues,” in Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire ed. by Daniel Jolowicz and Jaś Elsner (CUP 2023): 51-70.
• “Coming Late to the Table: Methodius in the Context of Sympotic Literary Development,” in Methodius of Olympus: State of the Art and New Perspectives ed. Bracht (de Gruyter 2017): 18-37.

Forthcoming:

• “The Meaning of Male Hair in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus” for the Colloquium Clementinum III: Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus (Brill).
• “Christian Theology in the Context of Classical Traditions of Thought,” in Cambridge History of Early Christian Theology, ed. Lewis Ayres. Cambridge University Press (contracted; article submitted July 2021).