Susan Ashbrook Harvey: The Olfactory Imagination

Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the DIrector of the Program in Early Cultures, and Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. She specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity, with Syriac studies as her particular focus.

Dr Harvey has taken special interest in several areas that are particularly relevant to what we do. One of these is fragrance — the meaning and experience of smell and fragrance in early Christian history. This she explored primarily in her groundbreaking book — still a standard in the field — Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. Another is her interest in singing, particularly women’s singing, in Syriac Christian tradition. These areas make for fascinating conversation.

Dr Harvey has published widely on topics relating to asceticism, hagiography, women and gender, hymnography, homiletics, and piety in late antique Christianity. She is presently working on biblical women in Syriac hymnography and homiletics, and the Syriac women's choirs that performed these works.

She also continues to work on religion and the senses, in particular on the manner in which sensory rhetoric is used to heighten the emotional aspects of late antique religious texts. Liturgical lament, especially in Syriac and Greek, is another area of her current research. She became Director of the Program in Early Cultures in January 2018.