Sarah F. Porter, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Dr. Sarah F. Porter is a historian of the literature, practices, and material culture that emerged in the wake of Christianity in the second through fifth centuries CE. Her research and archaeological fieldwork has taken her to Greece, Italy, and Turkey....

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Portrait of Dr. Sarah F. Porter

Contact Information

Education & Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D., A.M., Harvard University

M.Div., Vanderbilt University Divinity School

B.A., Southwestern University

Curriculum Vitae

Courses Taught

RELI 193 (FYS): Religion and Stuff

RELI 267: Early Christianity

RELI 467 / WGST 450: Early Christian Sex and Gender

Dr. Sarah F. Porter is a historian of the literature, practices, and material culture that emerged in the wake of Christianity in the second through fifth centuries CE. Her research and archaeological fieldwork has taken her to Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Her current book project focuses on early Christian deathscapes, such as cemeteries and martyria, as sites of emotion and political jockeying. Other publications engage with the complicated legacies of archaeology and museums. In her classes, students encounter the complex and vibrant worlds of the early Christian Mediterranean through archaeology and ancient texts. Dr. Porter strives toward an inclusive and dynamic learning environment in the classroom.

Articles

“Exhuming the Archive: The Cemeteries of Antioch-on-the-Orontes through Legacy Archaeological Research.” American Journal of Archaeology 130.2 (2026): 293–314.

“Writing to Paul: Using Interactive Fiction to Explore Early Christian Worlds.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 6.1 (2025): 23–47.

“Life, Ethics, and Scale.” Religious Studies Review 51.2 (2025): 389–391.

“A Church and Its Charms: Space, Affect, and Affiliation in Fourth-Century Antioch.” Studies in Late Antiquity 5.4 (2021): 639–677.

“Imagining Otherwise: The Lives of Objects and Other Expert Practitioners.” Religious Studies Review 47.3 (2021): 303–5.

“Incompatible Sites: The Land of Israel and the Ambulant Body in the Museum of the Bible.” Ancient Jew Review (Online). 30 January 2018.

Chapters

With Laura Nasrallah. “Things.” In Religion and Context: Graeco-Roman Religious Practices in their Socio-Cultural Milieu. Ed. Jan N. Bremmer, Jorg Rüpke, and Georgia Petridou. Neue Pauly Supplements. Stuttgart: Metzler, forthcoming 2026.

“Teaching the Body: Spatial Strategies at the Museum of the Bible.” In The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction, ed. Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon, pp. 121–42. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2019.

Reference Entries

With Jennifer A. Quigley. “Archaeology, Greco-Roman.” Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. Ed. Christopher Matthews. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

“Sardis.” Bible Odyssey (Online). Society of Biblical Literature. 2020.

“Ephesus.” Bible Odyssey (Online). Society of Biblical Literature. 2019.

Book Reviews

Paula Fredriksen, Ancient Christianities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024). Commonweal 152.5 (2025).

Georgia Frank, Unfinished Christians: Ritual Objects and Silent Subjects in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). Material Religion 19.3 (2023): 315–316.

Travis Proctor, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). Journal of Early Christian Studies 31.3 (2023): 395–397.

Meghan Henning, Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). Early Christianity 13.3 (2022): 376– 79.

Cavan Concannon, Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Ancient Jew Review (Online). 10 December 2018.

Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Ancient Jew Review (Online). 15 March 2017.