The book I found is titled, “Early Christianity and the Roman Empire.”  I have enjoyed learning about how christianity was influenced by the Roman Empire and Constantine.  I am especially interested in how the religion changed during the 1st century of its existence and how it became defined by the doctrinal ecumenical councils.  It is interesting to me how the Christian traditions that continue today were defined and rooted in the people in the ecumenical councils.

Initially I used the library catalog’s website to find relevant sources.  I used keywords combinations like, “Rome, Christianity, Influence, Orthodox, Origin.”  Initially I found some very obscure titles and articles that related to other aspects of judaism and christianity, but after some browsing I found some very useful texts.

The book I discovered was published in 1984 and has a plain light blue cover with a simple title on the spine.  It was found on the second floor in a section with other books about Christianity and Rome.  The books adjacent to the one I found had titles such as, “Late Ancient Christianity,” “Last Pagens of Rome”, “The Roman Revolution of Constantine,” and “The Rise of Christianity.”  The shelves above and bellow contained books about christianity in the middle ages and renaissance.

I looked through the table of contents and found a section titled, “Lactantius and Constantine.”  The chapter details the influence that Constantine and Lactantius, the advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor, had on Christianity.  The influence the men had on christianity included, theological progression, propaganda, and political movements.  I think this book could be useful for a paper on Early Christianity and Rome.

Over the past month I have enjoyed learning about some of the social implications of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.  I was  specifically interested to learn how religion helped shape social hierarchies and constructed certain roles women were supposed to play.

Initially I used the library catalog’s “one search” feature to find relevant sources.  I used keywords combinations like, “women, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism.”  Initially I found some very obscure titles but after some browsing I began to useful articles and essays in Journals.  Though the texts were not books, some off these periodicals had relevant titles such as, “Women’s wealth and worship: female patronage of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism in medieval Tamilna.”

Eventually I came across a book titled, “Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India.”  The book was published in 2000 and had a plain black cover with a simple title on the spine.  It was found on the second floor in a section with other books about women and feminism around the world.  The books adjacent to the one I found had titles such as, “Resurgence of Indian Women,” “Feminism in India”, and “Portraits of Chinese women in Revolution.”  The shelves above and bellow contained books about women in other regions of the globe such as, “Women in Kuwait.”

After looking through the table of contents, I found a section titled, “Usable Women” which discusses the portrayal of women in the epics.  It looks to be a very useful chapter especially for a potential essay topic on women and the social heirachy dictated by religion.  I found the chapter interesting because the author argued that women only marginally enjoyed a more free life in the in ancient India.  The epics testify to the subordination of women’s interests to those of their male counterparts, noting that women did not have decision-making roles and were often absent from the narrative all together.  It used the dharmaśāstras as an example.  They were a code of conduct formulated by men for the supposed purpose of governing the lives of both men and women.  In the dharmaśāstras, women’s lives were bound by much more rigid requirements. I think a close analysis of ancient texts and their influence on women could be very useful in my paper.