Otto, Jennifer
Associate Professor
History and Religion Department
- Phone
- (403) 329-2547
- jennifer.otto@uleth.ca
Office Hours
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00–3:00pm
About Me
Jennifer Otto is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge, where she teaches courses on Christianity, Bible, and Western Religions.
Biography
BA, University of King's College (2006)
MA, McGill (2009)
PhD, McGill (2014)
Jennifer Otto's research and teaching explore how Christians remember and re-tell stories about their past, and how these memories and re-tellings shape self-understanding in the present. She is the author of Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press, 2018).
After graduating with a BA (Hons.) from the University of King's College in Halifax, NS, she earned her MA and PhD in Religious Studies at McGill University, where she held a Vanier Canada Graduate Fellowship. From 2015-2017, Dr. Otto was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Erfurt in Erfurt, Germany, before joining the University of Lethbridge in 2018.
Dr. Otto's current research project, "Remembering Anabaptist Martyrs", investigates the reception and representation of early Christian martyrs among Anabaptists in the 16th century and in the present day. The project is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
PhD, McGill (2014)
Jennifer Otto's research and teaching explore how Christians remember and re-tell stories about their past, and how these memories and re-tellings shape self-understanding in the present. She is the author of Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press, 2018).
After graduating with a BA (Hons.) from the University of King's College in Halifax, NS, she earned her MA and PhD in Religious Studies at McGill University, where she held a Vanier Canada Graduate Fellowship. From 2015-2017, Dr. Otto was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Erfurt in Erfurt, Germany, before joining the University of Lethbridge in 2018.
Dr. Otto's current research project, "Remembering Anabaptist Martyrs", investigates the reception and representation of early Christian martyrs among Anabaptists in the 16th century and in the present day. The project is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
Publications
Willing to Die: Martyrdom in the Mennonite Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2026 (in press).
Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press, 2018.
“Comparison and (dis-)continuity: The Case of Philo and the Alexandrian Christians” Pages 347–358 in Religious Inventions: Ancient Mediterranean Practice and the Study of Religion. Edited by William Arnal and Erin Vearncombe. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press (2025).
"Making Martyrs Mennonite" in Desiring Martyrs: Locating Martyrs in Space and Time (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).
"Were the Early Christians Pacifists? Does it Matter?" The Conrad Grebel Review 35 (2017).
"The Church that Never Fell: Reconsidering the Mennonite narrative of the Church, 100-400CE." Mennonite Quarterly Review 91 (2017): 37-70.
"We Slay Demons: Moral Progress and Origen's Pacifism." Church History 92 (2023).
"Making Martyrs Mennonite" in Desiring Martyrs: Locating Martyrs in Space and Time (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).
"Were the Early Christians Pacifists? Does it Matter?" The Conrad Grebel Review 35 (2017).
"The Church that Never Fell: Reconsidering the Mennonite narrative of the Church, 100-400CE." Mennonite Quarterly Review 91 (2017): 37-70.
Research Interests
Intellectual history of Early Christianity; reception of Patristic texts in early modern Europe; the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands; religious toleration and its limits.