UNE Professor to deliver annual Classics lecture

November 28, 2007

Professor Majella Franzmann, a leading scholar from the University of New England, has been invited by the Australian Academy of the Humanities to give the Trendall Lecture for 2007. She will speak about her research into the position of women in early religions.

Professor Franzmann (pictured here), an international authority on early Christian, Gnostic and other religious writings in the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic and Syriac languages, was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2001. She is the first UNE scholar to have been asked to give the highly-regarded annual address.

Her lecture, "Beyond the stereotypes: female characters and imagery in Manichaean cosmology and story", will be at the University of Sydney tomorrow evening (Thursday 29 November).

"Manichaeism was one of the most important religious movements that arose in the Graeco-Roman world and was a serious competitor for early Christianity," Professor Franzmann explained. "The position of women in the group has always been held to be much better than the position of women in Christianity as it developed, but serious work on this question has not been done in the past."

"I'm honoured to be invited to give this year’s Trendall Lecture," she said, "and I'm pleased to be able to disseminate the results of my research further."

The Trendall Lecture was inaugurated in 1997 to honour the memory of Professor A.D. Trendall (1909-1995), who was Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney from 1939 to 1954. Professor Trendall was one of the twentieth century's foremost authorities on the history of Greek art. The Trendall Lecture, originally developed in conjunction with the Institute of Classical Studies in London, is given each year by a distinguished scholar on themes associated with Classical studies.

The public lecture is free and will begin at 6 pm in the General Lecture Theatre in the University of Sydney's Quadrangle Building. Refreshments will be served from 5.15 pm. For more information on the lecture, and to notify the organisers of intentions to attend, phone (02) 9351 5658.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Professor Majella Franzmann displayed here expands to show her with her book Jesus in the Manichaean Writings.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 28, 2007 04:10 PM