Emily R. Cain, PhD
Associate Professor
Emily Cain completed her Ph.D. in the History of Christianity at Fordham University in 2016 and her M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2007. Her teaching and research focus on Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially how early Christians used ideas about bodies, knowledge, and the structure of the world to think about God.
Her first book, Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God (Oxford University Press, 2023), explores vision and knowledge in the ancient Mediterranean world. She shows that when early Christians wrote about seeing God, they were also defining what humans can do, how they relate to one another, and how they engage with God.
She is currently working on a second book, Degrees of Difference: Heat, Motion, and Hierarchy in Early Christianity. This project examines how early Christian thinkers used ideas about heat to rank bodies and souls, showing how spiritual hierarchy could appear to be part of the natural order.
Across her research and teaching, Cain invites students to look beneath the surface of ancient Christian texts to ask how ancient ideas shaped the way early Christians imagined God, humanity, and the world.
Education
Ph.D, Theology, Fordham University, 2016.
M.Div, Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007.
Research Interests
Christianities in Late Antiquity, Mystical Theologies, Epistemology, Rhetoric, Metaphor, Theological Anthropologies
Specialty Area
Patristics, Christianity in Late Antiquity, History of Christianity
Professional/Community Affiliations
Society of Biblical Literature, American Academy of Religion, North American Patristics Society, ReMeDHe (Religion, Medicine, and Disability, and Health in Antiquity)
Courses Taught
Christian Theology; Western Intellectual Traditions: Antiquity to the Middle Ages; Lost Women of the Catholic Imagination; The (Dis)Abled Body in Catholic Thought; Magic, Medicine, and Miracles; Reading Augustine; Early Christian Monasticism; Mystical and Apophatic Theologies; History of Christian Thought: Ancient to Medieval.
Publications/Research Listings
Books
Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Perfected Perception: Modes of Knowing God in Clement of Alexandria.” Studia Patristica CX, Vol. 7, ed. Markus Vinzent et al. Leuven: Peeters, 2021: 167-175.“Tertullian’s Precarious Panopticon: A Performance of Visual Piety.” Journal of Early Christian Studies. 27.4. (Winter 2019), 611-633.
“Medically Modified Eyes: A Baptismal Cataract Surgery in Clement of Alexandria.” Studies in Late Antiquity. 2.4. (Winter 2018), 491-511.
“Knowledge Seeking Wisdom: A Pedagogical Pattern for Augustine’s De trinitate.” Studia Patristica LXX, Vol. 18, ed. Markus Vinzent et al. Leuven: Peeters, 2013: 257-264.
Peer-Reviewed Chapters
“Mystical Wounds: Eastern Patristic Authors on the Song of Songs.” ed. Timothy Robinson, Song of Songs in Christian Spirituality. Companion to the Song of Songs in Christian History. Leiden: Brill, 2021: 18-41.
Awards
2026 Gannon Faculty Fellowship, Loyola University Chicago.
2025 Summer Research Stipend, Loyola University Chicago.
2024 Sujack Research Award, “Master Researcher.” Loyola University Chicago.
2023 Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage Course Development Grant for “Lost Women of the Catholic Imagination,” Loyola University Chicago
2022 Nominated, Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence, Loyola University Chicago
2022 Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage Course Development Grant for “The (Dis)Abled Body in Catholic Thought,” Loyola University Chicago.
2021 Runner-Up, Provost’s Award for Teaching Freshmen, Loyola University Chicago
2020-2021 Lilly Endowment Funded Grant, “First Do No Harm: Trauma Informed Pedagogy in the Non-Traditional Classroom,” Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.
2019-2020 Lilly Endowment Funded Grant, Early Career Faculty Teaching Undergraduates, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.