Associate Professor, Religious Studies Ph.D., Duke University, 2005 M.A., Duke University, 2000 M.St., Oxford University, 1996 B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995 Office: Email: chin@

Research Interests
Early Christian social and intellectual history; early Christian ritual; literary cultures of late antiquity and the early middle ages; history of religious media and text transmission in Western culture; premodern notions of gender, sexuality, and the body; history of religious architecture.

Current Project
The Momentum of the Word: Rufinus of Aquileia and the Birth of Christian Literature, a book-length study of translation theory and theologies of scribal practice in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.
Articles on: Ambrose of Milan and sacramental architecture; Augustine of Hippo and problems of state-sponsored persuasion; Origen of Alexandria and Stoic cosmology.

Recent Publications
Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. To read the review, click here .
“Through the Looking-Glass Darkly: Jerome Inside the Book.” In The Early Christian Book, ed. W. Klingshirn and L. Safran. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007, 101-116.
“Origen and Christian Naming: Textual Exhaustion and the Boundaries of Gentility in Commentary on John 1.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14 (2006): 407-436.
“Telling Boring Stories: Time, Narrative, and Pedagogy in De catechizandis rudibus.” Augustinian Studies 37 (2006): 43-62.
“Rhetorical Practice in the Chreia Elaboration of Mara bar Serapion.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 9 (2006). Online journal; article available here.
“The Grammarian’s Spoils: De Doctrina Christiana and the Contexts of Literary Education.” In Augustine and the Disciplines, ed. Mark Vessey and Karla Pollman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 167-183.

Grants and Fellowships
Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2007-2008
Loeb Classical Library Foundation Grant, 2007
Fellow, American Academy in Rome, 2003-2004
Charlotte Newcombe Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2002-2003
James B. Duke Fellow, Duke University, 1996-2000