Herbert Rimerman (USA)

I hold a BA in Classics from Columbia University, where I studied Hebrew and Aramaic in addition to Greek and Latin. I received a Laidlaw Undergraduate Research Scholarship, which I used to study the production and circumscription of Jewish identity in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period. My senior thesis, I Feel It in Your Bones: Reading Hellenistic Funerary Epigram, was awarded the Douglas Gardner Caverly Prize in Classical Studies. I came to Oxford to pursue an MPhil in Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World. 

My research interest lies in the social circles and social networks of the ancient world, which revolved increasingly around ethnic and religious identities through Classical and Late Antiquity. I am interested in studying the ways in which people created and enforced social boundaries through the production of literature and the performance of ritual and communal practice, as well as how and why people transgressed these boundaries. Along these lines, I investigate early Christianity and Judaism as agents and interlocutors in both discourse and mutual influence, and I view European Christianity as an act of historical and cross-cultural reception in everything from language to material culture to modes and methods of exegesis. I am incredibly grateful to Ertegun House for funding my endeavours here at Oxford and to my fellow Scholars for enriching my experience and adding depth and a variety of perspectives to my research.