The 2026 Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society will take place on May 21–23, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. 
Dear Colleagues in NAPS,
The 2026 Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society will take place on May 21–23, 2026 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. The links to submit individual paper proposals and proposals for pre-arranged thematic sessions are now available and listed below.
The deadline to submit proposals is November 19, 2025. Notification of acceptance of all papers and session proposals will be made by December 15, 2025. (You’ll find a list of important dates at the bottom of this page.)
The meeting will include up to seven online sessions, which are intended to enable participation by NAPS members whose circumstances preclude them from attending large in-person meetings. One thematic session with open calls for papers is planning to be online, leaving six more sessions for individual papers and possible pre-arranged thematic sessions.
Types of Sessions
There will be three kinds of sessions at the meeting.
- Individual Paper Proposals
Use the following link to propose a paper on any topic in patristics and/or early Christian studies:
Google Form for Individual Paper Proposal
You will be asked for your name, email address, and NAPS Member ID number, as well as whether you wish to present your paper online or in person, with the understanding that online slots are limited. You will need to provide a title, an abstract of 150-300 words, and 2-4 key words. You will also be asked whether your paper requires audio-visual technology to display visual evidence (see below for further information on this point). Accepted papers will be organized into sessions by the program committee.
- Proposals for Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers
The thematic sessions with open calls for papers are listed below with their organizers and descriptions. Use the following link to propose a paper for one of these thematic sessions:
Google Form for Proposals for Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers
You will be asked for your name, email address, and NAPS Member ID number; whether you present your paper online or in person is determined by the modality of the session to which you propose your paper. You will need to provide a title, an abstract of 150-300 words, and 2-4 key words. If the session to which you have proposed a paper is in person, you will also be asked whether your paper requires audio-visual technology to display visual evidence (see below for further information on this point). Accepted papers will be organized into the session proposed by the organizer(s). If your paper is not included in the thematic session, it will automatically be considered with the other individual paper proposals.
- Proposals for Pre-Arranged Thematic Sessions
These sessions should be thematically consistent and will typically include three or four papers; they may include a respondent and/or time for discussion of all the papers. Use the following link to propose a pre-arranged session:
Proposals for Pre-Arranged Thematic Sessions
As the organizer of the session, you will be asked for your name, email address, and NAPS Member ID number, as well as whether you wish to the pre-arranged session to be online or in person, with the understanding that online slots are limited. You will need to provide a title for the session, a rationale of 150-300 words, and 2-4 key words. Individual abstracts for each paper are not required. You must also submit the complete schedule of the session, listing the session chair, each presenter with the title of their paper, and the respondent (if any). The schedule must include the time in minutes allocated to each paper and to any respondent and/or discussion; the time must total 100 minutes. You will also be asked whether your session requires audio-visual technology to display visual evidence (see below for further information on this point).
Guidelines for Paper Proposals
Successful proposals will (1) offer a clear indication of the thesis to be argued; (2) indicate which primary sources will be discussed; (3) indicate the relevant methodological, historiographical, theological, and/or philosophical context; (4) incorporate sources (including archaeology and material culture) that fall within the parameters of patristics and/or early Christian studies.
Audio-Visual Capability
As mentioned above, proposals for in-person papers and sessions need to indicate whether audio-visual capability is required to present visual evidence and, if so, why. Please keep in mind that audio-visual capability is very expensive, and it is imperative in 2026 that NAPS reduce the costs of the conference as much as possible. For this reason, only a limited number of rooms will have A/V capability available. Within these constraints, we will try to accommodate all reasonable requests, but A/V should not be used simply to present textual material, including quotations, bullet points, bibliographic information, and the like.
Eligibility
All presenters at the meeting must be members of NAPS in good standing at the time of the meeting, and they must be registered for the meeting. Members should submit no more than one abstract. Each person may present only one paper at the meeting.
NAPS Outstanding Student Paper Prizes
Graduate student members of NAPS whose papers are accepted for the 2026 Annual Meeting are invited to apply for a $250 “NAPS Outstanding Student Paper Prize” by sending a complete text of their conference paper (no more than 2,500 words, not including footnotes/endnotes) to the Chair of the NAPS Board’s Awards and Prizes Committee, Lewis Ayres (l.o.ayres@durham.ac.uk), by March 1, 2026. Up to five prizes will be given, and the winners will be announced at the 2026 NAPS Business Meeting.
Remote Participation
The NAPS Board welcomes remote participation in the meeting, and it will be possible to have online sessions of all three kinds: (1) sessions with individually submitted papers; (2) thematic sessions with open calls for papers; and (3) prearranged thematic sessions. When submitting proposals as outline above, you will be asked whether you intend your paper or session to meet in person or online.
Online sessions will be scheduled during the meeting simultaneously with the in-person sessions, with a maximum of one online session per time slot. It will therefore be possible to attend or present in an online session even if one is attending the meeting in person.
There will be no hybrid sessions, that is, in-person sessions in which one or more presenters are remote. All sessions will be either completely in person or completely online.
In the interest of containing costs, we are planning to coordinate and host the online sessions ourselves. Presenters and attendees of online sessions must, like all participants in the meeting, be members of NAPS in good standing. Remote participants who do not attend the meeting in person will also need to register, but will do so at a lower rate than in-person attendees.
We hope that online sessions will make participation possible for members who, for whatever reasons, are unable to attend meetings in person.
List of Thematic Sessions with Open Calls for Papers
- Clothing and Meaning-Making in Early Christianity (online)
Organizers: Arthur Urbano (aurbano@providence.edu) & Robin Jensen (robinmjensen@gmail.com)
For this online session organized by the International Catacomb Society, we are seeking papers that address the theme “Clothing and Meaning-Making in Early Christianity”. Garments were a defining aspect of Roman society, serving as markers of status, gender, ethnicity, profession, and so on, part of what Terence Turner coined as “the social skin.” The curation and adornment of the body were not necessarily personal choices, but determined by custom, and sometimes mandated by law, locating individuals within a complex of social categories. But garments are not limited to material forms. They can also be verbalized as text, appearing in literary sources as conveyors of meaning, in the form of metaphor, allegory, or symbol. They also appear visualized in art, not simply displaying what actual garments looked like, but part of the code of the overall composition, contributing to the image’s meaning. Early Christians both subscribed to and challenged the sartorial norms of Roman society and produced material, verbal, and visual garments that created and conveyed meaning. For this session we are looking for papers that specifically address meaning-making through material, textual, and/or visual clothing in Early Christian contexts. This could include textiles with embroidered images, or other material remains; allegorical exegesis of biblical garments, or symbolic interpretations of ascetic or episcopal garments; or, interpretations of garments as represented in catacomb frescoes, or on sarcophagi, or in the mosaics of churches. Alternatively, the complex messaging in garments adorned with both Christian and traditional iconography, such as Dionysian imagery, presents another lens through which to explore the “social skin” of Early Christianity.
- Cyprian of Carthage: Connections, Networks, Mobility, and the Making of Authority (in-person)
Organizers: András Handl (andras.handl@unibe.ch) & Harry O. Maier (hmaier@vst.edu)
This panel invites contributions that re-examine the oeuvre of Cyprian of Carthage by shifting focus from the thematic content of his writings to the networks they created, sustained, and transformed. Cyprian’s writings and letters in particular were not merely conveyors of theological ideas, but active instruments in forging alliances, constructing authority, and shaping the social imagination of early Christian communities.
Patrons, couriers, and intermediaries played crucial roles, while the very act of transmitting letters across vast distances—at considerable energy, expense, and risk—forged or maintained alliances. These exchanges, in turn, created temporal frameworks, geographies of belonging, and new forms of community identity.
We encourage papers that consider the role of both human and material conditions in the creation of these networks. Methodological engagement with approaches such as social network analysis or actor-network theory is particularly welcome.
Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
– How were networks of correspondence used to secure and reinforce authority in Carthage and beyond?
– What role did patrons and intermediaries play in sustaining Cyprian’s influence?
– In what ways did the physical and material conditions of communication shape the reach of these networks?
– How did correspondence generate imagined geographies and temporalities within early Christian communities?
These perspectives illuminate the active entanglement of people, texts, routes, and materials, enabling us to explore Cyprian’s writings beyond their content but also as a strategic instrument in constructing networks of influence and authority.
- Cyril of Alexandria and His 19th and 20th Century Inheritors (in-person)
Organizers: D. Hayden Hagerman (hayden.hagerman@marquette.edu) & Nathan Porter (nathan.porter@duke.edu)
Much has been made of Cyril’s reception in the work of the Ressourcement theologians of the middle-to-late 20th century. The same cannot be said for his 19th-century and early 20th-century inheritors. And yet it was this earlier group that was not only chiefly responsible for introducing Cyril to the Ressourcement theologians but also responsible for reintroducing him into Western theology and scholarship more broadly.
This session invites papers on Cyril’s transmission and reception in the 19th-century and early 20th century. Possible paper topics might address Cyril’s reception in
individual theologians like John Henry Newman, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, and Sergei Bulgakov. Others might address questions and issues concerning Cyril’s textual transmission in Migne’s “Patrologia Graeca.” Still others might analyze Cyril’s reception in theological schools like the Scuola Romana or in movements like that of the English Tractarians.
- (De)Constructing Cisness (in-person)
Organizers: Katie Kleinkopf (kwklei02@louisville.edu) & Tina Shepardson (cshepard@utk.edu)
In recent years we have seen emerging scholarship in early rabbinic and medieval studies that challenges us to de-nature cisness, such as works by Rafael Neis, Max Strassfeld, Sarra Lev, Roland Betancourt, M. W. Bychowski, Dorothy Kim, and more. The study of late antiquity and early Christianity, however, has been slower to enter these conversations. We propose an open call for scholarship that contributes to conversations about the ways in which scholars have presumed cisness in our early Christian sources, and the ways our understanding of the ancient world might change if we consider cisness to be constructed as we consider other sexgendering categories to be. We would love to see paper proposals that speak to these assumptions of cisness and open other possibilities for interpreting our late ancient sources that allow for the multiplicity and mutability of premodern sexgender performance. We are imagining papers that address transing, postcolonial and decolonial projects, constructions or deconstructions of cisness and binarity, among other related topics.
- Digital Humanities Committee: Guides for Workflows, Software, and Textual Processing (in-person)
Organizer: Corey Stephan (corey.stephan@stthom.edu)
A given historical scholar’s digital research and writing workflow is likely to be hyper-individualized while devised haphazardly rather than via intentional planning. Thoughtfully planning one’s digital workflow, however, allows one to achieve heightened efficiency — often with a significant gain in overall productivity. This session will be a space in which patrologists with special digital workflows share their finest tips in the form of brief, self-contained tutorials. The tutorials will be equivalent to what are often called “Lightning Talks” at computer science and information technology conferences. Proposals for “Lightning Talks” may pertain to operating system setup, desktop environment organization, graphical software application usage, shell scripting, citation management, terminal commands, papyrus or manuscript manipulation, document typing or editing, digital reading, or anything else that has to do with configuring an efficient patristic scholarship digital workflow. While each tutorial should touch upon a topic that is likely to challenge fellow NAPS members, preference will be given to topics that both carry potential for utility across a diverse array of NAPS membership and pertain to (accessible) free and open source (FOSS) software and/or open access academic materials. Each accepted speaker should prepare an educational tutorial or showcase (guide) to be delivered in-person and followed by practical audience questioning. If you might have something about computer efficiency in patrology that you suspect to be worth sharing with colleagues, please submit a proposal for this session at NAPS 2026.
- Fathers and Fatherhood in Early Christianity (in-person)
Organizer: Marcin Wysocki (marcin.wysocki@kul.pl)
Although the subject of God as a father and spiritual fatherhood has been discussed many times, the physical side of fatherhood, or issues related to conception, birth, protection, upbringing, education, offspring, the father’s life and death were rarely dealt with in the researches on the theology of the Church Fathers. The goal of the proposed Thematic Session is to gather researchers interested in proposed subject and to present the physical fatherhood and related issues in the works of the early Christian writers. Some of them were fathers themselves, many experienced the unique atmosphere of father’s home and fatherly authority in their lives, but there were also those who lost their fathers early on or whose fathers were sometimes not the best examples of a good father, and they also included their experiences of fatherhood and sonship in their works. In my Thematic Session I would like to gather researchers who would present the early Christian writer’s views on the very process of conception and childbearing, upbringing and education, the characteristics of a father, the obstacles to becoming a good father, issues of the recognition of fatherhood, the physical presence of a father with offspring, issues of a father’s influence on his offspring and their choices, issues of a father’s old age and infirmity, and finally his passing away, death and any testamentary issues related to the father. It would help to see what in early Christianity “to be a father” meant.
- Latin Homoian Writings from Verona and Bobbio (in-person)
Organizer: Austin Steen (austinjsteen@outlook.com)
Compared to the literature composed by orthodox figures, writings by individuals from groups deemed heretical are far less extant, which complicates the attempt to understand the nuanced thoughts and reasonings undergirding their theological principles. Roger Gryson’s work on the critical texts in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 87 provides a rather unique opportunity for scholars to investigate Latin compositions by Homoian authors from the fourth and fifth centuries. Yet, there has been very little research specifically dedicated to these works. This session focuses on the writings contained in manuscripts from Verona and Bobbio, found on Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 87 pp. 1-145 and pp. 197-265 respectively. The former possesses a wide array of genres, including tractates on the gospels, liturgical homilies, and polemical treatises. The latter is comprised of a fragmented commentary on Luke and several “theological fragments.” Each piece requires special attention to its purpose and content, especially to avoid the presumption of a ubiquitous Homoianism. Additionally, questions surrounding authorship and geographical location add to the complexity of these writings and their relationships with one another. This session thus calls for papers that analyze these works in a manner conducive toward ascertaining a greater understanding of the Homoian identity according to each text’s idiosyncratic historical, cultural, and intellectual context. Welcomed approaches include, but are not limited to, the theological content (Trinitarian, Christological, etc.), exegetical methods, homiletic styles, quotations of Christian and non-Christian sources, and rhetorical techniques.
- New Frontiers in Maximus the Confessor: Dubious, Spurious, or Lesser-Known Writings (in-person)
Organizers: Kevin Clarke (clarke.kevin@shms.edu) & Corey Stephan (corey.stephan@stthom.edu)
From the Ambigua to the Mystagogia, Maximus the Confessor’s creative texts have captured the historical imaginations of multiple generations of scholars. While many large works of certain attribution hold sway over the discourse as inexhaustible fonts of research and reflection, numerous texts traditionally attributed to Maximus or otherwise strongly connected to him but of less obvious weight or opaque authorial attribution often have received less attention than they deserve. We are assembling this session as a special space for critical engagement with such texts. We welcome proposals for papers about dubia, spuria, or lesser-known writings either traditionally attributed to Maximus or directly affiliated with him in other key ways. Possible topics include the various additamenta identified by Sergei Epifanovich, the Scholia on Pseudo-Dionysius, the disputationes, the Capita XV, the Capita Gnostica, the Quaestiones ad Theopemptum, the Georgian Vita Beatae Virginis attributed to Maximus, the minor Epistles of Maximus (such as those addressed to Cyriscius, Polychronius, or others), and more. By engaging texts surrounding Maximus the Confessor that are not standard components of scholarly discourse, we intend to encourage new frontiers in scholarship on his life and thought.
- Orality and Materiality (in-person)
Organizers: Lucas Christensen (LucasChriste@gmail.com), Michelle Freeman (michelle.freeman@siu.edu), & Jillian Marcantonio (jillian.marcantonio@duke.edu)
In light of recent interest in both oral performance (homiletics, hymnography, poetry) and material culture (bodies, space, ritual objects), this panel seeks papers that explore intersections of orality and materiality in ancient Christianity. Speech and material culture were not isolated media; rather, each influenced the other, a phenomenon most readily evident in orally performed texts. How did homilists and hymnographers interpret and shape the bodies, buildings, and objects around them? How did objects and spaces affect oral performance and content?
We imagine papers that touch on preachers’ interpretations of architecture and space; the corporeal, sensory, and affective impact of oral and liturgical performance; the material and spatial settings of homilies and hymnography; and oral discourses on ritual objects. We are especially hopeful to receive papers from a broad temporal (early Christian, late antique, early Byzantine), linguistic (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic) and geographic range (Mediterranean, West Asia, Africa).
- Perspectives on Prudentius (in-person)
Organizer: Kathleen Kirsch (kmkirsch@umary.edu)
In response to the burgeoning scholarship on Prudentius, an intentional conversation around his significance, his sources, his responsiveness to and influence on contemporary intellectual and devotional life is due. Although Prudentian scholars have begun to engage in dialogue at NAPS, we wish to formalize that conversation as a thematic session. We welcome submissions that approach the poetry of Prudentius from literary, historical, archeological, theological, and other disciplinary perspectives, as well as through inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches. Graduate students and early-career researchers are warmly encouraged to submit papers!
- Religion, Power, and Rulership in Late Antiquity (in-person)
Organizers: Carl Rice (crice@vassar.edu) & Daniel Kimmel (dkimmel@lclark.edu)
Scholars have long recognized the close association between religion and power in late antiquity. The connection between them was perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the conceptualization and practice of rulership. This thematic session (which also hosted papers at the 2024 Annual Meeting) invites paper proposals that explore the intersection of religious ideology, the exercise of power and authority, and the nature of rulership in late antiquity. We intentionally define each of these thematic elements broadly, both in terms of chronology and geography, to allow for the possibility of generative cross-cultural discussion. Topics may include (but are by no means limited to): the use of religion in the formation and enforcement of universalizing imperial identities; the role of religion as a site of resistance to various forms of rulership; the relationship between religious leaders, “secular” rulers, and the ways each enacted power; or the influence of religious ideology on conceptions of kingship and/or other forms of leadership.
- Sex, Sanctity, and Power: Gender and Sexuality in Late Ancient Worlds (in-person)
Organizers: Jennifer Barry (jbarry@umw.edu) & Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (edigeser@ucsb.edu)
How did late ancient authors imagine gender, sexuality, and embodiment and what do these visions tell us about power, resistance, and community formation? This open call invites papers that explore gender and sexuality not as secondary concerns but as central frameworks for interpreting texts, practices, and memory in Late Antiquity. We welcome proposals on a wide range of sources and themes, including but not limited to: ascetic performance, erotic language in martyrdom, masculine/feminine authority, queerness in early Christian texts, transgression and punishment, virginity, and the racialized dimensions of gender and sexuality. Papers that challenge or expand canonical boundaries, adopt intersectional methods, or push the field in new directions are especially encouraged.
- Unseen hands and minds: demons, the enslaved, and stenographers in early Christian thought (in-person)
Organizers: Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (sjl39@cam.ac.uk) & Gabrielle Thomas (gabrielle.rachael.thomas@emory.edu)
How should writers and thinkers use highly efficient but potentially unreliable not-quite-human intelligence? What are the dangers and worries that attend using unseen hands and minds to read, write, and do theology? The phenomena of demonizing slaves and of casting slaves as not-human, even demonic, were mutually reinforcing in late antiquity, as can be seen by the tendency of elite Christian writers of the period to characterise the invisible labor of demons and enslaved scribes alike in terms of the speed and ethic of production, whether hasty or sluggish, attentive or careless. Demonology, enslavement, and stenography might seem to be radically different areas of study, but we propose to bring them together in a thematic session assembling and comparing early Christian ideas and anxieties about unseen beings who animated thoughts, tongues and pens, from Cyril of Jerusalem warning catechumens about the wiliness of demonically inspired heretical teachings to Ausonius’ epigrams worrying about the uncanny speed of his enslaved stenographer. We welcome papers that tackle one or more of these topics through focused case-studies or broader thematic comparisons, and encourage reflection on our own academic practices and questions about how we can and should make use of the intellectual labor of other entities, whether human or non-human.
Summary of Important Dates
October 15, 2025 — Links for submissions open.
November 19, 2025 — Links for submissions close.
December 15, 2025 —Notification of acceptance.
February 15, 2026 (approximately) — Program published on the NAPS website.
March 1, 2026 — Deadline to apply for Outstanding Student Paper Prizes.
May 21-23, 2026 — Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Questions?
Please direct any questions you may have about the proposal submission process or any other aspects of the meeting to me at mark.delcogliano@stthomas.edu.
Best wishes,
Mark DelCogliano
NAPS Vice President