Dr. Maria Doerfler

Biography

Maria E. Doerfler serves as an Associate Professor of Late Antiquity in Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. Prior to joining Yale, she held the position of Assistant Professor of Christianity in Late Antiquity at Duke Divinity School, where she was also the director of the Duke/UNC Center for Late Ancient Studies. Her research primarily focuses on the interpretation of authoritative texts, law, philosophical writings, and scripture from the sixth centuries C.E., with a particular emphasis on the contexts of personal and communal crises that shape exegesis. Doerfler's monograph, 'Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity', published by the University of California Press in 2020, received the American Academy of Religion’s Book History of Religions Prize. Her recent work, 'Death and the Afterlife in Syriac Christianity: Creating Social Identity and Emotional Communities', is set to appear with the University of Cambridge Press. She is finalizing a volume on the intersection of writing and law in sacred histories and working on a project about migration rituals in late antiquity. Doerfler has published in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and has served as an editor for publications like Church History and Review of Biblical Literature. She holds a Ph.D. in Early Christianity from Duke University, a J.D. from UCLA, and a B.A. in political science from Princeton University.

Research Interests