Ronald Charles
Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Ronald Charles is an associate professor in the Department for the Study of Religion. He received his PhD in religious studies from the University of Toronto.
Charles’ research and teaching interests include the interdisciplinary study of ancient Christian literature; Mediterranean identity and race in antiquity; slaves in the Greek and Roman world; and classical reception, method and theory in the academic study of religion.
“The academic study of religion is the study of the complexity and multiplicity of human behaviors, beliefs, scriptures, institutions, social systems, teachings, rituals and the origin myths,” Charles says. “We try to understand the differing identities and social constructions and modes of thinking that have been devised over the years. The study of the early Jesus movement — my primary area of interest — is a study of the engrossing ways in which many different social actors have tried to negotiate their place in the Greek and Roman world of the first and second century.
“I am fascinated by the texts, the people of the ancient world and some of the ways in which they navigated their own world. There is much to learn and to ponder by studying religion in its multifaceted aspects.”
Charles is the author of Paul and the Politics of Diaspora (Fortress Press, 2014), Traductions bibliques créoles et préjugés linguistiques (L’Harmattan, 2015), and The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Writings (Routledge, 2020).