Contact Information
3019 Foreign Language Building
707 South Mathews
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Research Interests
History and Reception of the Bible, development of early Christianity, philosophy and religion in the Greco-Roman World
Education
Ph.D. University of Virginia, 1996
M.Div Emory University, 1986
B.A. University of Virginia, 1983
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Religion
Highlighted Publications
Feinberg, W., & Layton, R. A. (2013). For the Civic Good: The Liberal Case for Teaching Religion in the Public Schools. (The New Public Scholarship). University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6029043
Layton, R. A. (2004). Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship. University of Illinois Press.
Recent Publications
Layton, R. A. (2019). Shared Traditions and Public Reason: Religion in American Education. Reviews in American History, 47(1), 64-71. https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2019.0010
Feinberg, W., & Layton, R. A. (2013). For the Civic Good: The Liberal Case for Teaching Religion in the Public Schools. (The New Public Scholarship). University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6029043
Feinberg, W., & Layton, R. A. (2013). Teaching Bible in Public High Schools: Toward a Conception of Educational Legitimacy. American Educational Research Journal, 50(6), 1279-1307. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831213502517
Layton, R. A. (2013). Didymus the Blind and the Philistores: A Contest over Historia in Early Christian Exegetical Argument. In G. A. Anderson, R. A. Clements, & D. Satran (Eds.), New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, Jointly Sponsored by the Hebrew University Center for the Study of Christianity, 9–11 January, 2007 (pp. 243-267). (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah; Vol. 106). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004245006_011
Layton, R. A. (2011). Review: M. V. Niculescu's The Spell of the Logos: Origen's Exegetic Pedagogy in the Contemporary Debate Regarding Logocentrism. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 19(4), 603-605. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2011.0057