Eunice Villaneda-Bolaños

Credentials: BA, California State University, Northridge / MA, California State University / PhD, Claremont School of Theology (Present)

Denomination: Disciples of Christ

Specific Field: Religion and Societies

Biography: 

Eunice is a first-generation Latina of Mexican heritage. Her interests revolve around the Valentinians, an early Christian sect that offered a dissident yet faithful voice during the early formative years of doctrinal development. Eunice approaches the study of religion with the intent to subvert and challenge the dominant narrative of early Christianity and the perspective of early Christian groups deemed “heretical.” Her research aims to reconstruct and highlight the Valentinian Christian narrative that lies embedded and intermingled with several other Christianities in the first three centuries of the common era. In her research, Eunice has explored the role of women and gender among early Christianities as well as the role of individual and communal identity within them. Eunice’s dissertation research revolves around the Marco-Valentinian phenomenon, an event in which a woman prophesied and became a prophetess during a eucharistic meal. This phenomenon reveals the existence of female prophets in this Christian community that was later suppressed. Eunice’s dissertation aims to determine what it meant to be a female prophet in Valentinian Christianity through a model developed from a historical and cross-cultural investigation and how it fits in its larger Mediterranean Greco-Roman environment. This is intrinsically important as it will add to the history of Christianity and the role that women played in it.