Dr. Stephen Davis

Biography

Stephen J. Davis is the Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of History at Yale University, specializing in the history of ancient and medieval Christianity, with a particular focus on the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. He has served as Head of Pierson College and as Chair of the Council of Heads of College. Before his tenure at Yale, he lived in Egypt where he taught and worked as an academic dean at an Arabic-language theological college in Cairo. His teaching and research interests include monasticism, pilgrimage, the cult of saints, the history of biblical interpretation and canon formation, apocryphal literature, Egyptian Christianity, the Coptic language (including epigraphy and papyrology), the relationship of Christianity to the Arabic-speaking world, medieval Judaism, Islam, archaeology, visual material culture, and gender studies. He is the founder and executive director of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project (YMAP) and has authored several books and catalogues on related subjects. His forthcoming work emphasizes cultural heritage practice, drawing from over twenty years of fieldwork in Egypt.

Research Interests