Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. She is author of Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects and The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• IntroductionI. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGYPrelude: Anticipations of an Eco-ChorologyDreaming Khora: Plato's TimaeusInterlude: Fragments of an Eco-ChorologyKhroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and GenesisInterlude: Beginning Again with ScriptureIn/Conclusion: Khora, God, MaterialityPostlude: Beginnings, AgainII. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANSPrelude: Ecocriticism as Queer TheoryBefore Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of PlotinusQueerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of EgyptInterlude: DesertificationHoly Disfigurations: The Life of SyncleticaSaint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the StyliteInterlude: Performance ArtIn/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer CreaturesPostlude: A Tough LoveIII. Things and Practices: Arts of CoexistencePrelude: Theorizing ThingsThings: Relics and Icons in an Animate WorldThings: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos: Fragments of a Material Theology of ThingsThings: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's HexaemeronDesiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius: Words and Things/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety: The Things That MatterEpilogue: Worm StoriesNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"[E]rudite and evocative . . . Ancient Christian Ecopoetics is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's "decline and fall" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope, Ancient Christian Ecopoetics presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research." (Church History) "An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity." (Reading Religion) "A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication." (Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University)

Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. She is author of Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects and The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• IntroductionI. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGYPrelude: Anticipations of an Eco-ChorologyDreaming Khora: Plato's TimaeusInterlude: Fragments of an Eco-ChorologyKhroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and GenesisInterlude: Beginning Again with ScriptureIn/Conclusion: Khora, God, MaterialityPostlude: Beginnings, AgainII. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANSPrelude: Ecocriticism as Queer TheoryBefore Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of PlotinusQueerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of EgyptInterlude: DesertificationHoly Disfigurations: The Life of SyncleticaSaint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the StyliteInterlude: Performance ArtIn/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer CreaturesPostlude: A Tough LoveIII. Things and Practices: Arts of CoexistencePrelude: Theorizing ThingsThings: Relics and Icons in an Animate WorldThings: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos: Fragments of a Material Theology of ThingsThings: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's HexaemeronDesiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius: Words and Things/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety: The Things That MatterEpilogue: Worm StoriesNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"[E]rudite and evocative . . . Ancient Christian Ecopoetics is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's "decline and fall" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope, Ancient Christian Ecopoetics presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research." (Church History) "An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity." (Reading Religion) "A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication." (Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University)

Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. She is author of Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects and The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• IntroductionI. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGYPrelude: Anticipations of an Eco-ChorologyDreaming Khora: Plato's TimaeusInterlude: Fragments of an Eco-ChorologyKhroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and GenesisInterlude: Beginning Again with ScriptureIn/Conclusion: Khora, God, MaterialityPostlude: Beginnings, AgainII. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANSPrelude: Ecocriticism as Queer TheoryBefore Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of PlotinusQueerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of EgyptInterlude: DesertificationHoly Disfigurations: The Life of SyncleticaSaint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the StyliteInterlude: Performance ArtIn/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer CreaturesPostlude: A Tough LoveIII. Things and Practices: Arts of CoexistencePrelude: Theorizing ThingsThings: Relics and Icons in an Animate WorldThings: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos: Fragments of a Material Theology of ThingsThings: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's HexaemeronDesiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius: Words and Things/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety: The Things That MatterEpilogue: Worm StoriesNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"[E]rudite and evocative . . . Ancient Christian Ecopoetics is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's "decline and fall" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope, Ancient Christian Ecopoetics presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research." (Church History) "An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity." (Reading Religion) "A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication." (Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University)