Jane McLarty
Supervisor

Personal statement
My passions include teaching Greek, helping people to go deeper into the New Testament, gardening, Jack Russell terriers. I hope to facilitate the studies of my PhD students at Wesley House so that they can produce work they’re proud of.

Role at Wesley House
I’m presently supervising two PhD students, both working in post/decolonial approaches to Pauline letters.

Research interests
My research interests lie in the area of early Christian literature in the first two centuries, particularly apocryphal and martyrdom narratives. I’m presently interested in the role of space and place in this literature, especially in their imagination of the afterlife.

Supervisory experience
I have taught widely in undergraduate programmes in the university and the Cambridge Theological Federation, and recently after winding down my College career have had time to supervise one or two Master’s dissertations and the PhD students I presently work with.

Education
1985 BA (Hons) Classics, Girton College, University of Cambridge
1992 MPhil New Testament Theology, Girton College, University of Cambridge
2010 PhD The role of Emotion in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, King’s College London

Current Wesley House research students
Douglas Ncebere
Obusitswe Tiroyabone

 

Recent conference papers

  • “’We wish to inform you that we are being killed with our families’: the function of the letter form in Christian martyrdom accounts,” paper presented at the Kyknos conference Fragmented Narrative: The Narratology Of The Letter And Epistolary Literature In Ancient Greek, Lampeter 2008
  • ‘Sense and sensibility: class, gender and emotion in the Acts of Paul and Thecla,’ paper presented to the Kyknos seminar, Swansea 2009
  • ‘The character of Paul in Acts,’ paper presented to the Acts seminar at the BNTS conference, 2011
  • ‘The Empire of the Self,’ plenary lecture for Ancient Empires Madingley Summer School, 2013
  • ‘Why isn’t Thecla martyred?’, paper presented to the Early Christianity seminar at the BNTS conference, 2015
  • ‘Dreams of Paradise; visions of the afterlife in early Christian martyrdom narratives,’ paper presented to the Early Christianity seminar at the BNTS conference, 2018

 

Recent publications

  • ‘The function of the letter form in Christian martyrdom accounts’ pp 371-385 in Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature eds Owen Hodkinson, Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, Evelien Bracke. Brill: Leiden 2013 (https://brill.com/view/title/23814?rskey=dOX7VI&result=1)
  • Thecla’s Devotion: Narrative, Emotion and Identity in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Cambridge: James Clarke, 2018 (https://www.jamesclarke.co/product/theclas-devotion-narrative-and-emotion-in-the-acts-of-paul-and-thecla/)
  • ‘Early Christian Theologies of Martyrdom’ in the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, ed Paul Middleton, 2020 (https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Wiley+Blackwell+Companion+to+Christian+Martyrdom-p-9781119100027)