Life - by Catherine Michael Chin

About the Book

"A vivid and intimate glimpse of ancient life under the sway of cosmic and spiritual forces that the modern world has forgotten. Life: the natural history of an early Christian universe immerses the reader in the cosmic sea of existences that made up the late ancient Mediterranean world. Loosely structured around events in the biography of one early Christian writer and traveler [Rufinus of Aquileia], this book weaves together the philosophical, religious, sensory, and scientific worlds of the later Roman Empire to tell the story of how human lives were lived under different natural and spiritual laws than those we now know today"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A vivid and intimate glimpse of ancient life under the sway of cosmic and spiritual forces that the modern world has forgotten.

Life immerses the reader in the cosmic sea of existences that made up the late ancient Mediterranean world. Loosely structured around events in the biography of one early Christian writer and traveler, this book weaves together the philosophical, religious, sensory, and scientific worlds of the later Roman Empire to tell the story of how human lives were lived under different natural and spiritual laws than those we now know today.

This book takes a highly literary and sensory approach to its subject, evoking an imagined experience of an ancient natural and supernatural world, rather than merely explaining ancient thought about the natural world. It mixes visual and literary genres to give the reader a sensory and affective experience of a thought-world that is very different from our own. An experimental intellectual history, Life invites readers into the premodern cosmos to experience a world that is at once familiar, strange, and deeply compelling.

From the Back Cover

"This book is more than a biography of Rufinus, or an exploration of Origen and others. Spare, creative, and often blossoming into luxurious, expansive thought, Life challenges us to reconsider the vibrant, complex world of Mediterranean antiquity."--Laura Nasrallah, Buckingham Professor of Divinity and Religious Studies, Yale University

"From plants to stars, the aliveness of bodies takes center stage here, offering a crucial ingredient in the history of ancient Christianity. A work full of imaginative verve."--Patricia Cox Miller, Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion, Syracuse University

"In Life, Chin invites us into a late antiquity we have never experienced before. At the center is Rufinus of Aquileia, but this is no biography. It is, instead, an exquisitely and brilliantly written story of plants and stones, landscape and weather, water and air, and the stars all illuminated through the words of Rufinus. A reverberant and evocative history of possibility and transformation, with stories that are richly imaginative in the best sense of that word: alive and enlivening. As we become intimate with the late ancient universe through this book, we find ourselves changed."--Kim Haines-Eitzen, Hendrix Memorial Professor of Religious Studies, Cornell University

Review Quotes

"A provocative read for students and professionals alike, forcing us to engage with how scholarship of the past and present is composed. In an era where the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to how we write (or seek to avoid writing), Chin's call to attend to the relationships between person, pen, paper, and planet is more timely than ever."

-- "H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online"

"Life's museum of vitalities challenges all those who are invested in meeting and making the past in order to see possibilities of another future to further explore the impact of feeling, art, and objects on historical knowing, while compellingly retelling the stories of the vibrant citizens of this universe."-- "Macrina Magazine"

About the Author

Catherine Michael Chin is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Davis. He is also a multidisciplinary artist active in the San Francisco Bay Area.