Nicola Denzey Lewis

Professor

Awards and Honors

  • 2024-2025: Loeb Classical Library Foundation Sabbatical Fellowship, Harvard University
  • 2020: Fellow, Gilder Lehrman Center for Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
  • 2016-2017: National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship
  • 2016: Visiting Distinguished Lecturer, Max Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt
  • 2015-2016: Fellowship for Associate Professors, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
  • 2008, 2011: Visiting Scholar in Residence, American Academy in Rome
  • 2008: Derek Bok Award for Teaching Excellence, Harvard University
  • 2004-2005: Individual Research Grant, American Academy of Religion
  • 2004-2005: Faculty Research Associate, Women's Studies in Religion Program, Harvard Divinity School 

Publications

Books:

  • The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021
  • Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
  • Introduction to “Gnosticism”: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
    • Translated into Italian as I Manoscritti di Nag Hammadi. Una biblioteca gnostica del IV secolo. Trans. Matteo Grosso. Milan: Frecce, 2014. 
  • The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007

Edited Book:

  • Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies in Honor of Elaine Pagels. With Lance Jenott, Philippa Townsend, and Eduard Iricinschi. Berlin: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.

Selected Articles:

  • “What if the Pliny/Trajan Correspondence is Not What We Think It Is?” (forthcoming: Journal of Early Christianity)
  • “Guarding against Sexual Assault in Late Antique Egyptian ‘Magical Texts’: A Lived Religion Approach to Some Coptic ‘Magical’ Papyri." Religions of the Roman Empire (forthcoming)
  • “Virgins in Late Antique Rome: The View from the Catacombs.” Journal of Late Antiquity, (forthcoming)
  • “Of Dolls and Doubles: Thinking Through the Subjectification of Some Late Ancient Grave Goods.” Religions of the Roman Empire (forthcoming)
  • “Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire: Principles of a New Approach.” Studies in Late Antiquity 5/1 (2021), 104-118.
  • “Did Roman Jews Have Ritual?” Historia Religionum 10 (2018): 27-39.
  • “Damasus and the Derelict Relics.” Early Medieval Europe 26/4 (2018): 417-39.
  • “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Library.” (Co-authored with Justine Ariel Blount), Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 399-419.
  • “‘Enslavement to Fate,’ ‘Cosmic Pessimism’ and other Explorations of the Late Roman Psyche: A Brief History of a Historiographical Trend.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Réligieuses 33 3/4 (2005): 277-99.

Courses - Fall 2026

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