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In this timely book, Christine Shepardson shows how the field of late ancient Christian studies stands to benefit from the “Spatial Turn.” Shepardson’s book traces the development and contested space of late antique Antioch by shifting our focus away from theological debates alone and asks us to consider physical landscape as well. Admittedly, Shepardson notes, one of the limitations historians run into when attempting to study the built landscape of Antioch is that very little material evidence remains. What does remain is the literary afterlife and rhetorical descriptions of spaces long lost that attempt to control and manipulate the past.
In an interesting move, Shepardson skirts the more familiar field of sacred space led by thinkers such as Kim Knott, Thomas Tweed, and Jonathan Z. Smith. Instead, she incorporates the work of geographers, memory theorists, and those scholars who have studied maps as political tools. And while Edward Soja—a geographer with whom the book begins—has recently felt some pushback from Religious Studies scholars, Shepardson’s intentional departure helpfully reorients and guides us to ask different questions when assessing topographical details that occupied many diverse thinkers....