Things Unseen

"How does a teenager pretending to be a sex worker enact elite male mastery? How do the venerable walls of a church expose deceitful fake converts within? How does a forged text secure the unbroken lineage of Christian orthodoxy? How do seemingly realistic 'portraits' unmask modern (colonial, racialized) fantasies of an ancient past? In Things Unseen, Ellen Muehlberger exposes readers to a late ancient hall of mirrors: a series of illusory exteriors that ultimately reveal how interior truth is manufactured out of exterior falsehood."--Andrew S. Jacobs, author of Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible

"How did late ancient Christians know about the world, and how do we come to know about theirs? Drawing on sources from school exercises to mummy portraits, Ellen Muehlberger's elegant essays consider the construction of Christian masculinity and patriarchal authority, while contemplating how their worldview shapes and influences our own."--Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, University of California, Santa Barbara

Ellen Muehlberger is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is author of Angels in Late Ancient Christianity and Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity, and serves as editor for the Journal of Early Christian Studies.