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About Michael Motia
Michael Motia works primarily in late ancient Christianity. His first book, Imitations of Infinity, examined the transformation of theories and practices of mimesis—how and why people imitated—during late antiquity. His current work has focused on Christian transformations and inventions of space in the late Roman empire, that is, how new kinds of spaces (hospitals, cells, pillars, and more) shaped their political, social, and theological imaginations. He's also working on a book on color in late antiquity.
He teaches in Religious Studies and Classics at UMass Boston.
NBN Episodes hosted by Michael:
June 22, 2026
Ecologizing Late Ancient and Byzantine Worlds
How can we study the late ancient and Byzantine history from ecological perspectives? How might one grapple with the more-than-human in sources and me…
June 8, 2026
Veiling in the Late Antique World
Veiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head co…
May 25, 2026
Cyril of Alexandria: Against Julian
In 362/363 the Roman emperor Julian composed a treatise titled Against the Galileans in which he set forth his reasons for abandoning Christianity and…
May 11, 2026
How to Read Mishnah and Midrash
The early rabbinic period produced two major literary formations—the Mishnah and Midrash—which have since remained central pillars of Jewish textual t…
April 27, 2026
War and Community in Late Antiquity
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026) Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbaria…
April 13, 2026
An Enchanted World
In Late Antiquity (ca. 200–600 CE), the world was alive with unseen forces—divine agents who influenced every aspect of daily life. For most ordinary …
March 30, 2026
Monastic Desires
Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026) The Byzantine Abbot Symeo…
March 16, 2026
The Arsacids of Rome
At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this (open acce…
March 2, 2026
The Rise of Talmud
The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sage…
February 16, 2026
What Animals Teach Us about Families
Reading the Bible and rabbinic literature to reimagine the bonds between animals. Moving beyond debates about the ethics of animal consumption to focu…
February 2, 2026
The Chronicle of John of Nikiu
In the midst of profound political changes in late seventh-century Egypt, after the end of Roman hegemony and during Islamic rule, a bishop named John…
January 19, 2026
A Prophecy of Empire
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was one of the medieval world’s most popular and widely translated texts. Composed in Syriac in Mesopotamia in the …
January 5, 2026
The Importance of Being Gorgeous
In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called ea…
December 22, 2025
Gregory of Nyssa: on the Hexaemeron
Johannes Zachhuber and Anna Marmodoro, eds., Gregory of Nyssa: On the Hexaemeron: Text, Translation, and Essays (Oxford UP, 2025) This book presents …
December 9, 2025
Ministries of Song
Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of wom…
November 24, 2025
After Transformation
In After Transformation, Maia Kotrosits offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Recasting the mon…
November 10, 2025
Things Unseen
How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the mec…
October 27, 2025
Julian Augustus
The Roman emperor Julian (r. 361-363 CE) was a man of action and of letters, which he employed in an effort to return the Empire to the light of the p…
October 13, 2025
The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor
This book rediscovers a lost history of the Roman Empire, written by Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320-390) and demonstrates for the first time both the…
September 29, 2025
Gender Violence in Late Antiquity
Gender Violence in Late Antiquity confronts the violent ideological frameworks underpinning the early Christian imagination, arguing that gender-based…
September 15, 2025
A Memory of Violence
A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity (U California Press, 2025) traces the rheto…
September 1, 2025
Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration
Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from …
August 25, 2025
What Is Ancient History?
It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extin…
August 11, 2025
Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion
…