Patricia Cox Miller, the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), has been elected to the 2026 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — one of the most selective and prestigious learned societies in the United States.

Cox Miller becomes the ninth Syracuse University scholar elected to the Academy, joining Thomas J. Watson Professor Emerita Ann Grodzins Gold and The Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita Virginia Burrus from the Department of Religion. The Academy announced its 252 newest members on April 22, recognizing leaders across academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research and science.

Founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock and 60 other scholar-patriots, the Academy was established to gather knowledge and advance learning in service to the public good. Its membership across more than two centuries includes figures from Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton to Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead and Toni Morrison.

Cox Miller joined the Syracuse faculty in 1977 and has spent nearly five decades as a leading scholar of religion in the ancient world. Her research spans the religious imagination of the Greco-Roman world, early Christian asceticism, and Gnostic and Neoplatonic traditions as well as the intersections of religion, aesthetics and the body. Her books — among them Dreams in Late Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 1994) and The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) — have shaped the field of late ancient religious studies for generations of scholars.

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2026.