C. Michael Chin

C. Michael Chin studies religion in the ancient Mediterranean world, specializing in the emergence of Christianity within Mediterranean polytheism. His work imagines how people who lived in the Roman world thought about their gods, old and new, and how this thinking shaped the way they lived their everyday lives. He is particularly interested in the ways that seemingly mundane, trivial, strange, or esoteric details of everyday life and everyday thought in the ancient world can reveal the much larger imaginative structures on which ancient religious practice depended. He teaches courses in early Christian ritual and practice, early Christian written culture, and the relationship between myth, ritual, and embodied experience in the ancient world more broadly.

In addition to his more traditional academic work, Chin has worked in puppetry and theater since 2016 and is excited about ways in which academic research and experimental theater can come together. He is currently finishing a short co-written book on a multimedia adaptation of Euripides’ Bacchae for which he provided puppetry and video. His current research project, on the legends and afterlife of the Roman emperor Diocletian, includes photography and video elements as well as illustrated adaptations of regional folk tales.

Life: The Natural History of an Early Christian Universe (University of California Press, 2024)

“Marvelous Things Heard: On Finding Historical Radiance,” The Massachusetts Review 58.3 (2017): 478-91

Melania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family, co-edited with Caroline T. Schroeder (University of California Press 2016)

Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, co-edited with Moulie Vidas (University of California Press, 2015)

 Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)