Origen on Gender. The feminine as an intellectual category in the works of Origen of Alexandria.

My project aims to investigates to what extent Origen of Alexandria used the feminine as an intellectual category, that is, as a rhetorical and literary code for expressing theological doctrines.

The majority of studies on women and gender have only marginally discussed the works of such a renown third century theologian, since Origen does not fit the dichotomous paradigm of research in this field, traditionally divided between “gender studies” and “women’s studies”.

Rather, he employed the feminine as a philosophical and theological category to express his trinitarian, anthropological and ecclesiological doctrines. My project will be conducted in three following steps, each one focused on a specific objective.

First, I will identify and list all the occurrences in which the feminine is employed as an intellectual category in Origen’s literary production. Secondly, I will contextualise these passages within Origen’s overall theology.

Thirdly, I will identify antecedent traditions which held similar beliefs about the feminine and from which Origen could have drawn.

I am well suited for this task, as I am trained in historical theological methods of investigation and have already conducted research on feminine imagery in early Christianity.

Moreover, my project is innovative in the field as there are only a handful of studies which considers the feminine as an intellectual category, and none of them concerns Origen of Alexandria. Aarhus University is the perfect match to my project, as my proposed supervisor (Prof.

Anders-Christian Jacobsen) is an expert on Origen of Alexandria and the other members of staff are experts in Origen’s reception history and trained in literary analysis of early Christian texts.