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Acknowledgments

This project has been so many years in the making, in some form or another, that if it were a human child, it would likely be graduating high school about now. From the first time I read Michael Roberts’ Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs as a curious undergraduate, I knew I wanted to dig more deeply into this martyrial poetry—I knew that Prudentius’s poems had important things to tell us about how literature could create identities and communities around representations of violence—that is, how realities could be built out of rhetoric.

In all this time, I have amassed innumerable debts to friends, family, teachers, students, colleagues, and institutions who have supported me and my research, all of whom have, together, made this project possible. This is all to say that I have far too many people to thank than I could possibly mention here. I feel incomparably lucky to have had such a wealth of love and assistance available to me during this process, and the gratitude expressed here is a fraction of what I wish to convey.

First, I want to thank Amy Davis-Poynter, Marcia Adams, and Sumati Agarwal at Routledge, along with the anonymous reviewers who read this book and gave such thoughtful and helpful feedback. I also want to thank Rutgers University for pursuing a pandemic extension policy for pre-tenure faculty that allowed me the time to fully implement reviewers’ suggestions.

My first forays into Christian history and late antique Latin martyrological poetry were under the astute and encouraging guidance of Anne McGuire and Catherine Conybeare, and I want to thank both for their continued advice and friendship. I also want to thank the Haverford College Religion Department, who taught me (among many other things) what true collegiality and mutually supportive scholarship should look like. Particular thanks to Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Ken Koltun-Fromm, John Modern, and Michael Sells.

I found similarly supportive and intellectually generous communities at Indiana University. The Religious Studies Department and the Medieval Studies Institute there were both filled with faculty and fellow students who made all the challenges of PhD work exciting, joyful, and meaningful. In particular, I would like to thank David Brakke and Constance Furey for their exceptional care and guidance. Both are well known for their brilliant scholarship, but what I am most thankful for is their kindness and the keen sense of humanity they show toward their subjects and their students. I have also benefitted tremendously from the academic and professional guidance of Jeremy Schott, Aaron Stalnaker, Bridget Balint, Ed Watts, Patrick Michaelson, John Walbridge, and Eva Mroczek, among many others. I am also greatly thankful for the peers at Indiana who challenged me, studied with me, wrote with me, workshopped with me, and geeked out with me: in particular, Cheryl Cottine, Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger, Sarah Dees, Dana Logan, David Maldonado Rivera, Richard Barrett, Lindsey Hansen, Sean Tandy, and Erin Sweany.

A note of special thanks goes to Ellen Muehlberger and Brad Storin. Ellen welcomed me to Indiana, took me under her wing, and continues to act as my academic guardian angel—most recently by reading (what I thought was) the final draft of this book and letting me know (kindly and graciously, as always) just how far I had left to go. This book is infinitely better for her interventions. And I could never thank Brad enough for his guidance and friendship, for his patience, persistence, generosity, and humor. Not incidentally, it was Brad who suggested that just maybe these living martyrs I kept going on about might be interesting enough to write a dissertation on.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my departmental colleagues at Rutgers—they are wonderful conversation partners and models of collegiality and compassion. My particular thanks to Emma Wasserman, Hilit Surowitz-Israel, Joseph Williams, and Tao Jiang for their advice and insight, and special thanks to Tia Kolbaba for going out on several limbs for me. Thanks as well to Jim Niessen for all his aid and advocacy in acquiring the resources needed for my research. I also had the good fortune to arrive at Rutgers just as the school was launching its Program for Early Career Excellence, led by Beth Tracy and Bernadette Gaillard. PECE made this vast university feel manageable and connected me with a group of supportive scholars across an array of disciplines who helped me hone my own projects through our weekly writing groups—thanks to David Dreyfus, Charles Senteio, Carla Cevasco, Anette Freytag, Anastasia Graham Bailey, Kelcie Ralph, Bea Peruzzi, and Jeff Ulrich. Rutgers also aided my scholarship via research grants: a 2017–2018 Fellowship from the Institute for Research on Women; a Humanities Plus Grant in 2019; a 991 Challenge grant in 2019 from the School of Arts and Sciences; and a COVID Impact Grant in 2022 from the Chancellor-Provost.

Selections of Chapters 2, 4, and 6 have appeared in earlier forms in the Journal of Late Antiquity and Studia Patristica and have been improved through those processes of peer review. Other components have benefitted from being presented and interrogated at talks at the North American Patristics Society annual meetings, Oxford Patristics conferences, and invited lectures at Bryn Mawr College and Indiana University. Many thanks to all of these interlocutors, with an additional thanks to Tina Shepardson and Adam Ployd, who read my work at various stages and offered helpful feedback.

I also want to acknowledge and thank the friends and family without whose support I could not have completed this project—certainly not as well or as pleasantly. Jen Burdick, Keith Doughty, Liz Ault, Julie Jenkins, Andrew Peterson, Josephine Archibald, Jessica Fragola, Bethy Outes, Emily Hellman, the Miranda family, and the ladies in my “May 2016 Mamas” group have all been tremendous sources of reassurance and respite through the ups and downs of the last few years. The Hannah family, too, has been amazingly supportive, welcoming me to their clan with open hearts and open arms. And my gratitude for the Fruchtman family knows no bounds—though I need to send a special shout out to Ron Taylor for reading my full dissertation and giving me such helpful feedback way back in 2014. And no acknowledgments could be complete without mentioning my two children, Joe and Brooke, who have brought me so much joy and broadened my horizons immeasurably.

Finally, there are two acknowledgments I do not have adequate words for; I will nonetheless make an attempt.

First, to my husband, Tom, whose love, humor, patience, good judgment, and hard work have so enriched my life. He is a model parent and a model partner, and I count myself unfathomably lucky to be his wife.

Second, to my parents, Larry and Rubie Fruchtman, whose unconditional love, constant support, unparalleled example, and vast enthusiasm for life, art, and travel have all been blessings to me. I so profoundly wish that mom were still here to see this book published (and to meet her newest grandchildren).