During the academic years 1999/2000 and 2000/2001, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies focused on the issue of conversion.

Topics Included:

• Converts and missionaries in the Old and New Worlds
• Encountering difference
• Ancient and modern cults
• Conversion and apostasy
• Conversion, slavery, and abolition
• Martyrdom
• Conversion and identity
• Political and economic power and conversion
• Heresy, backsliding, and conformity
• Spiritual and physical healing
• Assimilation and the influence of one culture upon another
• Methods of conversion and persuasion
• Political and intellectual conversion
• Hierarchy, race, and religion

Davis Center Fellows

1999-2000

• Rachel Ankeny, Connecticut College
• Richard Bushman, Columbia University
• Susan Einbinder, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati
• Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, University of Bielfield
• Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, New York University
• Dorothee Schneider, Eastern Illinois University
• L. Carol Summers, University of Richmond
• John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame

2000-2001

• Aditya Behl, University of California, Berkeley
• Susanna Elm, University of California, Berkeley
• Valerie Flint, University of Hull
• Peter Gose, University of Regina
• Heather Hendershot, Queens College
• David Murray, University of Nottingham
• Julia Smith, University of St. Andrews

Shelby Cullom Davis Center Volumes

Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing

Edited by Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton
Copyright 2003 University of Rochester Press

Conversion: Old Worlds and New

Edited by Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton
Copyright 2003 University of Rochester Press