Dawn LaValle Norman

Teaching in Greece for Paideia Institute's summer Ancient Greek program

Senior Research Fellow

Classics and Early Christian Literature

Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry

Australian Catholic University

Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award Winner (DECRA)

‘The Female Voice in Ancient Philosophical Dialogues’

Visiting Fellow at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities 2024-2025

Contact: dawn.lavallenorman@acu.edu.au

Academic Biography

My research centres on the Greek literature of the Roman Empire during the transitional period from the first to the fourth centuries CE, looking especially at the conversation between Christian and non-Christian literary texts during this period. Much of my work focuses on the history of the philosophical dialogue.

My first book presented a new reading of the fascinating Symposium of Methodius of Olympus, a third century CE Christian rewriting of Plato’s work that made radical changes in gender, topic and aesthetic from the Platonic original.

My current project, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) ‘The Female Voice in Ancient Philosophical Dialogues’, analyses the role that women play in philosophical dialogues from Plato to Augustine, tracking when women are allowed to speak and upon which topics they are deemed experts in the ancient and late ancient worlds. My argument is that by following the role of women in these works, you can also follow the rise and fall of certain topics gendered feminine. For this project, I was chosen as an Innovation Fellow with the Anchoring Innovation Gravitation Grant at the University of Utrecht during 2020 and a Lewis-Gibson Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies in 2023. A video of a public lecture I gave while a Lewis-Gibson Fellow can be found below. Some of the work of this project was published as a Cambridge Element in 2022 for the ‘Women in the History of Philosophy’ series edited by Jacqueline Broad.

I am also researching the role that Aristotle plays in the later development of the dialogic tradition in both Greek and Latin. As part of this project, I am looking at Boethius’ First Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, a neglected early work of Boethius and his only philosophical dialogue besides The Consolation of Philosophy.

I came to ACU in 2017 after a Junior Research Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Classics at Princeton (2015).

Publications

The female voice

in ancient

philosophical dialogues

Discovery Early Career Research Award

Australian Research Council (DE220100854)

'The Female Voice' is a multi-year project devoted to conceptualising and communicating how a major innovation was accepted in the ancient world, when women for the first time began to serve as intellectual role-models for both men and women. Through articles, a major monograph, a theatre prize, and public engagement, I will craft a ground-breaking narrative of female intellectuals over 800 years of history. The expected outcome is a new history of the role women played in the intellectual life in the ancient world, and a new understanding of how their voices were used as authorities on certain issues in philosophy and the good life.

The Diotima Prize

The Australian Research Council funded the creation of 'The Diotima Prize' ($5,000 x 3), awarded to three one-act plays in 2024, in connection with my DECRA project ​“The Female Voice in Ancient Philosophical Dialogues.”

The ancient Greeks invented a new way of writing philosophy as a dramatic conversation. Yet women were rarely allowed to join the stage in ancient philosophical ​dramas. My research probes the historical roots of women's marginalisation in philosophical conversations from the Greek tradition into the modern day. Why is ​philosophy still so male-dominated? The Diotima Prize will bring new voices onto the philosophical stage by supporting the creation of dramatic works that inspire ​us to rethink what it means to be a philosopher. The winning plays by India Alessandra, Louise Hopewell and Sharmini Kumar were read publically on May 12, 2024.

Publications for the MEdia

Podcasts and Radio Interviews

The Christian Century Podcast ‘Intelligence moved by love: ​Thecla as philosopher with Dawn LaValle Norman (S3:E4)’,​ March 6, 2024

RRR Melbourne, Uncommon Sense with Amy Mullins

(minute 2.25-3.00), March 7, 2023

ABC Radio National, The Stage Show with Michael Cathcart

'The Diotima Prize: Philosophy and Drama'

(minute 38-53) January 24, 2023

ABC Radio National The Philosophers Zone with David Rutledge

‘Women Philosophers in Antiquity’

March 8, 2023

ABC Radio National, Self-Improvement Wednesday

'Thecla, Found Families and Philosophy'

The Drive with Richard Glover, Oct. 19, 2022

ABC Radio National ‘Soul Search’ with Meredith Lake, Oct. 16, 2022

'Women's Voices in Ancient Texts and Australian Churches'

ABC Radio Sydney, 'Afternoons with Jeremy Valentine', ​March 10, 2021

ABC Radio National, 'Sunday Extra with Julian Morrow', ​April 4, 2021

PUblic Lecture:

Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies, Greek Dialogues Series

May 18, 2023

• The lecture runs until minute 53.30, followed by questions.
  

“Medical and Poetical Breastmilk in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus”

For the Seminar Series: From the Breast: Interpretations and Representations

of Breastfeeding and Infant Feeding in Pre-Modern Cultures

January 18, 2023

Other Academic publications

ARTICLES

• "Mark's Mothers and the Matronymic: Linking ‘the Son of Mary’ (Mk 6.3) to ‘the Daughter of ​Herodias’ (Mk 6.22)" New Testament Studies, forthcoming
  
• “Matronymics at Work: Female Succession Techniques in Lucian's Dialogi Meretricii and Some ​Early Thecla Literature”, Classical Philology 119.3 (July 2024).
  
• “Contesting Aristotle: Science, Theology and the Resurrection of the Body in Methodius of ​Olympus’ De Resurrectione and the Dialogue of Adamantius”, Vigiliae Christianae 76.2 (2022): 121-​143.
• "Becoming Female: Marrowy Semen and the Formative Mother in Methodius of Olympus’ ​Symposium”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 27.2 (Summer 2019): 185-209.
  
• “Feasting at the End: The Eschatological Symposia of Methodius of Olympus and Julian the ​Apostate”, Studia Patristica 94, Vol. 20 (2017): 269-284.
• “Divine Breastfeeding: Milk, Blood and Pneuma in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus”, Journal ​of Late Antiquity 8.2 (Fall 2015), 322-336.
  

Chapters in Edited volumes

• “Permission to Speak? Cleobulina/Eumetis in Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages and Mary in the Pistis ​Sophia,” in Plutarch and His Contemporaries: Sharing the Roman Empire, ed. Katarzyna Jażdżewska and Filip ​Doroszewski.Brill’s Plutarch Studies, Volume 14 (Brill 2024): 335-351.
  
• “Female Characters as Modes of Knowing in Late Imperial Dialogues: The Body, Desire, and the Intellectual Life” in ​The Intellectual World of Christian Late Antiquity: Reshaping the Classical Tradition, 100-600 CE. Edited by Lewis ​Ayres, Matthew Crawford and Michael Champion (CUP 2023): 347-365.
  
• “Courtroom Rhetoric in Imperial and Late Antique Philosophical Dialogues,” in Articulating Resistance under the ​Roman Empire ed. by Daniel Jolowicz and Jaś Elsner (CUP 2023): 51-70.
  
• “Coming Late to the Table: Methodius in the Context of Sympotic Literary Development,” in Methodius of ​Olympus: State of the Art and New Perspectives ed. Bracht (de Gruyter 2017): 18-37.
  

Forthcoming

• “Identification and Distance in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans: Subjects and their Absences” in The ​Cambridge Companion to Lucian, ed. Simon Goldhill (in press for publication Nov. 2024).
• “Whose Breasts? Whose Milk? The Multiplicity of Nursing Mother Metaphors in the Works of Clement of ​Alexandria” for a festschrift for Robin Darling Young (Catholic University of America Press), submitted Jan. 2024.
• “Christian Theology in the Context of Classical Traditions of Thought,” in Cambridge History of Early Christian ​Theology, ed. Lewis Ayres. Cambridge University Press (contracted; article submitted July 2021).