The present volume is the product of a unique sort of collaborative effort aimed at bringing together relatively unseasoned scholars – that is, graduate students – and their more experienced counterparts in an environment conducive to interdisciplinary research. In 2000, when the editors were both still in the midst of our doctoral studies in the Religions of Late Antiquity subfield of the Department of Religion at Princeton University, Prof. Peter Schäfer approached us for ideas about innovative ways to enrich graduate-student training and to foster further collaboration between faculty and students in our subfield, with the support of funds generously granted for this purpose by Prof. John F. Wilson, then Dean of Princeton's Graduate School. This dovetailed with a growing sense on the part of the students in our subfield that we would benefit from having a formal yet supportive forum at which to share our ongoing research. Excited discussions soon yielded a plan for an event with a twofold structure: (1) a semester-long workshop on a theme of special relevance to the study of Late Antiquity, at which students would present papers and receive feedback from Princeton students and faculty, culminating in (2) a public colloquium that would feature reworked versions of these papers, alongside presentations from the faculty members of the workshop and invited scholars from other institutions.