Announcements: Workshops

Nodegoat for Byzantinists Workshop

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The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and Byzantine Studies Association of
North America are pleased to offer an introductory workshop on Nodegoat for graduate students
and early career researchers in collaboration with Dr. Jesse W. Torgerson of Wesleyan

University.

An Introduction to Nodegoat for Byzantinists, workshop by Jesse W. Torgerson (Wesleyan

University), Zoom, Friday, October 13, 2023, 12:00–3:00 PM EDT.

How many of us organize key portions of our research and notes in spreadsheets? Whether
comparing manuscripts, organizing lists of persons and places, cataloguing objects, or creating
tallies of any kind, digital spreadsheets have become a ubiquitous scholarly tool. For many of us,
our spreadsheets have started to become unwieldy (how many columns is too many?), or they
would benefit from being able to “talk” to open-source reference information like the historical
locations in Pleiades. If this is you, then you would benefit from learning about how to build

your own relational database: come and learn.

Nodegoat (https://nodegoat.net/) is an open-source software, built to allow scholars with no
training in computer programming, doing historical social science and humanities research, to
turn their research notes into a custom database. Nodegoat’s free platform allows you to turn an
organized spreadsheet into data entry platforms for whatever kind of notes you want to create, to
explore new possibilities for analysis, visualization, and links with other projects, and to allow
you to set up custom visualization tools to analyze and present what you have. This introductory
workshop will introduce you to the concepts behind Nodegoat, guide you in setting up an initial
research environment, and leave you with the information to develop that environment.
For those who are interested in setting up their own Nodegoat database, a follow-up workshop
will provide guidance and the opportunity to learn additional customizations. Information about
the follow-up workshop will be shared with participants after the initial workshop.
Registration closes Monday, October 9, 2023.

Who is eligible?
* Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after October 2015) in the
field of Byzantine studies.
* All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate
students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last
eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not
already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form
(https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership
status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art
and Culture, with any questions.

Call For Participants: Studying East of Byzantium X: Communities

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The Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA, are pleased to invite abstracts for the next Studying East of Byzantium workshop: Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities.

Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities is a three-part workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students and very recent PhDs studying the Christian East to reflect on how to reflect on the usefulness of the concept of “Community” in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Michael Pifer, University of Michigan, and Salam Rassi, University of Edinburgh. The workshop will meet on November 17, 2023, February 9, 2024, and June 6–7, 2024, on Zoom. The timing of the workshop meetings will be determined when the participant list is finalized.

We invite all graduate students and recent PhDs working in the Christian East whose work considers, or hopes to consider, the theme of communities in their own research to apply.

Participation is limited to 10 students. The full workshop description is available on the East of Byzantium website (https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/). Those interested in attending should submit a C.V. and 200-word abstract through the East of Byzantium website no later than September 13, 2023.

For questions, please contact East of Byzantium organizers, Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University, and Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at contact@eastofbyzantium.org.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

Dumbarton Oaks Graduate Student Museum Study Day

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In conjunction with the ongoing interdepartmental project “Passage Between Worlds: Exchanges Along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in the Middle Ages.”

Egyptian Textiles and Medieval Indian Ocean Trade

Friday, October 13, 2023
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Applications due: July 17, 2023

In conjunction with the ongoing interdepartmental project “Passage Between Worlds: Exchanges Along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in the Middle Ages,” the 2023 Dumbarton Oaks Museum Graduate Study Day Egyptian Textiles and Medieval Indian Ocean Trade will consider Indian cotton textiles found in Egypt, India, and Indonesia and emblematic of a vibrant maritime trade network found east of the Mediterranean Sea in the late antique and medieval periods.

The workshop will be co-taught by Elizabeth Dospel Williams (Dumbarton Oaks), Anna Kelley (University of St. Andrews), Sumru Belger Krody (The George Washington Museum and The Textile Museum), and Arielle Winnik (Yale University), who will discuss the trade, manufacture, and use of textiles across the Indian Ocean in the premodern periods.

In the morning, these scholars will present their current research, with a particular focus on recent exhibitions featuring Indian textiles. After lunch, participants will spend the afternoon studying textiles from the Dumbarton Oaks Collection in object storage and the Cotsen Textiles Collection at the Textile Museum.

Funding

Dumbarton Oaks will reserve participants’ accommodation in its on-site Guest House for one night (October 12) and will arrange for Friday lunch in the Refectory. Participants should book their own travel to Washington, to be reimbursed up to $600 upon submission of receipts.

Applications

Currently enrolled graduate students in good standing are eligible to apply. Dumbarton Oaks does not sponsor J1 visas for Study Day attendees. We encourage applicants from graduate programs in art history, archaeology, history, classics, religious studies, and other fields who might benefit from close engagement with our collections and from training in material culture approaches.

To apply, please submit a CV and cover letter with a brief summary of the candidate’s research interests, plans for future research, and an explanation of why attendance is important to the candidate’s intellectual and professional development. All materials should be submitted as one pdf to museum@doaks.org. Applications are due July 17, 2023.

Procopius and his Justinianic World Workshop

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Procopius and his Justinianic World workshop (hybrid event, timings are local to Barcelona) 

Tuesday 30th to Wednesday 31st May 2023 

University of Barcelona 

Tuesday 30th May 

9.30 Opening session 

10-10.40 Keynote speaker: Juan Signes Codoñer (U. Complutense Madrid)
Invective and panegyric in historiography? The case of Procopius  

10.45-11.15 Break 

11.15-12 David Kennedy (U. Exeter)
Procopius’ use of Coded Invective at the Start of Book II of Wars  

12-12.40 Oriol Febrer (U. Leiden)
Parodies of Imperial Discourse in Sixth-Century AD Greek Epigrams  

12.40-13.20 Sergi Grau (U. Barcelona / Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica)
Theodora, a (not so) holy harlot: Procopius’ Secret History and the hagiographical narrative  13.30-15 Break 

15-15.40 David Parnell (U. Indiana) (online)
Procopius and Antonina: Competitors for Influence with Belisarius?  

15.45-16.30 Christopher Ian Lillington-Martin (U. Barcelona / U. Coventry)
Procopius’ Portrayal of Place  16.30-16.45 Break 

16.45-17.30 Marco Cristini, (Istituto Italiano di Storia Antica) (online)
The End of the Gothic War in Procopius and Agathias

Wednesday 31st May 

9.30-10.10 Larisa Ficulle Santini (U. St Andrews / U. Sapienza)
After and beyond Procopius: Agathias and the Cave of the Sibyl

10.15-11 Marlena Whiting (U. Oxford) 
Expressed by the Mosaics: The Ekphrasis of The Chalke Dome Mosaic in Light of Iconographic Parallels  

11-11.30     Break 

11.30-12.15 Conor Whately (U. Winnipeg)
Procopius on Arabia and Palestine in the Sixth Century  12.15-13 Montserrat Camps-Gaset (UB) Procopius and Romanos the Melodist: Christian cult innovations in Constantinople  

13-13.45          Final discussion and closing session   

*If you would like a link to follow the sessions online (or wish to attend), please contact:  clillington-martin@ub.edu / mcamps@ub.edu 

Facultat de Filologia i Comunicació 

(Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, 08007 Barcelona) 

Sala de Professors: Edifici Josep Carner 

Organized by:  

  • Departament de Filologia Clàssica, Romànica i Semítica 
  • Màster de Cultures i Llengües de l’Antiguitat

 

 

 

 

 

Antioch: Memoirs of a City and its People

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Antioch: Memoirs of a City and its People
Friday 5- Saturday 6 May 2023, h. 17.00-19.00 (Istanbul Time)

In light of the recent devastating earthquake that struck ten cities in
Turkey on 6 February 2023, the workshop “Antioch: Memoirs of a City and
its People” aims to commemorate the city of Antioch across thousands of
years of its history and aspire to pay tribute to the city and its
people by remembering its past, grieving its present, and welcoming its
future.

The workshop stems from a collaborative effort by Bilkent University
(Departments of History and Archaeology, and CCI Program), Hacettepe
University (Sanat Tarihi Bölümü), IFEA-Istanbul, and Koç University.
It brings together young scholars and students alike to discover the
city, and its premodern history and encourage them to embrace future studies
concerning the city of Antioch.

The workshop is planned to be an online event on 5 and 6 May and has one
session per day to be held between 17 and 19 o’clock.
Each session is designed in a panel format and will host three or four
scholars discussing the city’s historical, architectural, or
intellectual aspects and its people. After their brief presentation (15
minutes maximum), a respondent will engage in a 15-minute dialogue.
Eventually, all speakers will be involved in the Q&A session (15-20
mins).

To join the event, please use the following link
https://zoom.us/j/7983865169?pwd=RktRcHRGc3FBcWNmcURTOXZOeUczdz09).

Speakers:

5. May, Friday
5:00 Welcoming speech, Sercan Yandım Aydın
5:10 Alessandra Ricci
5:25 Sinan Mimaroglu
5:40 Ayse Henry
5:50 Hayriye Bilici
6:05 Questions
Moderators: Elif K. Kayaalp and Anaïs Lamesa
6:30 End
6. May, Saturday
5:00 Scott Redford
5:15 Catherine Saliou
5:30 Mert Nezih Rifaioglu
5:45 Alexandre Roberts
6:00 Asa Eger and Andrea De Giorgi
6:15 Questions
Moderator: Nathan Leidholm
6:45 Closing Remarks, Luca Zavagno

 

 

MJC-BSANA DH workshop: GIS

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The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and BSANA are pleased to offer a four-day geospatial workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Dr. Ryan Horne of the University of California, Los Angeles and Dr. Becky Seifred of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Working with Maps: An Introduction to GIS, Spatial Data, and Geospatial Resources for Byzantinists, workshop by Ryan Horne (UCLA) and Becky Seifred (UMass Amherst), Zoom, May 15–18, 2023, 11:00 AM–4:00 PM EDT with a break from 1:00–2:00 PM

This online workshop will offer Byzantinists an introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and its potential applications in Byzantine studies. Participants will learn how to work with geospatial data, how to organize it, where to find it, and how to create their own. Working in QGIS, a free and open-source GIS desktop software package, students will learn how to visualize geographic information and create their own maps. Sessions will cover the basics of GIS and using QGIS: data and file types, installing QGIS and adding plugins, coordinate reference systems, displaying and working with vector and raster data, performing vector-based spatial queries, using the QGIS Layout Editor to create a static map, and georeferencing an analog map to be used in analyses or as a basemap. This material will be complemented by sessions touching on cartography and geography—critical approaches to cartography, principles of effective map design, the intersection of geography and historical studies—linked open data, digital gazetteers, publishing maps for print and web applications, mapping resources, and data sharing repositories for making data accessible, as well as introductions to the web-based applications ArcGIS StoryMaps and Recogito.

This workshop is intended for those who have very little or no experience with GIS.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is 16 hours of instruction and an additional 30 minutes to an hour between sessions for practice exercises and preparation for following session. Participants are required to attend all sessions. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes Monday, May 1, 2023.

Who is eligible?

  • Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after May 2015) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Graduate students and early career researchers outside of North America will be placed on a waiting list and contacted if space is available.
  • All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form (https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/working-with-maps.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

Piece by Piece: Mosaic Artifacts in Byzantium and the Ancient Americas

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Piece by Piece: Mosaic Artifacts in Byzantium and the Ancient Americas
WHERE: Dumbarton Oaks | Oak Room
WHEN: May 18  –  19, 2023
This workshop and museum colloquium will bring together art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, curators, conservators, and scientists to consider the production, use, and meaning of mosaic artifacts in Byzantium and the ancient Americas.
Across premodern cultures, the mosaic artform enjoyed tremendous prestige. In the medieval Mediterranean, no other pictorial medium could rival mosaic’s opulence and visual splendor or claim to entail the same level of technical expertise. Durable and infinitely reparable, mosaics intimated a sense of both history and timelessness. Similarly, in the ancient Americas, the mosaic medium embodied status, wealth, and authority. A range of socially and ritually significant objects, from weapons and jewelry to figurines, were adorned with exquisitely crafted mosaic inlays, featuring such rich materials as turquoise, lapis lazuli, serpentine, and mother-of-pearl. Tellingly, both Byzantine micromosaic icons and ancient American portable mosaic objects would captivate the imaginations of discerning antiquarians and collectors in early modern Europe. To these later audiences, mosaic epitomized cultures that were, from the European vantage point, geographically and temporally “far away.”
The Dumbarton Oaks Museum has unique holdings of artworks in the mosaic medium, including two Byzantine micromosaic icons (BZ.1947.24 and BZ.1954.2), a Wari mosaic mirror (PC.B.432) and figurine (PC.B.437), and a Maya mosaic mask (PC.B.557). The collection therefore presents a rare resource for reexamining mosaic artifacts from a cross-cultural perspective and exploring new ways of thinking more expansively about the mosaic medium and its histories, both local and global. In addition to this cross-cultural frame, this workshop and colloquium will serve as an opportunity to devote specific attention to Byzantine micromosaic icons, exceptionally rare (only thirty-six are known to survive today), and yet understudied, outstanding works of medieval art. The occasion of this workshop and colloquium offers us a far-reaching opportunity to return to the proverbial square one and reassess everything we think we know about Byzantine micromosaic icons: when they were created, where, how, by whom, for whom, and why.
Event details
The two-day event will consist of three parts: a colloquium, with a series of papers, and two study sessions. The first study session, led by conservators, will present new technical research on the micromosaic icons of the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia and St. John Chrysostom at Dumbarton Oaks, placing the Byzantine objects in dialogue with the Wari and Maya mosaic artifacts, also in the DO collection. The second session, which will be dedicated to Byzantine micromosaic icons specifically, will involve a structured group discussion about the current state of scholarship and imperatives for future research. The colloquium will be open to the public. The two study sessions will be open to colloquium participants and a small number of selected scholarly guests.
Organizers
  • Ivan Drpić, Associate Professor of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
  • John Lansdowne, Post-Doctoral Fellow and Assistant to the Director for Academic Programs, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
  • Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Curator, Byzantine Collection, Dumbarton Oaks

For more information, see the event’s web page:

https://www.doaks.org/events/other-events/piece-by-piece

Advanced Summer Course: ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in Situ’

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Advanced Summer Course: ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in Situ’

Centre of Excellence ‘Heritage BG’ Nessebăr,

Bulgaria, 12-15 September 2023

Organised and convened by Emmanuel Moutafov, Ida Toth and Andreas Rhoby

Overview

The Advanced Summer Course ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in situ’ offers a training programme to doctoral and early-career scholars, who wish to gain experience in using epigraphic material for research. The aim of the course is to advance the knowledge of medieval and early modern Greek inscriptional culture and its contributions to the overall heritage of Byzantium and the Balkans. The course will provide a unique opportunity to read, examine, and interpret inscriptions in situ, that is, in their architectural, iconographic, liturgical, art-historical, social and cultural contexts.

For more information, see the website: https://phd-edu.nasledstvo.bg/

 

Epigraphy Spring School: ‘Socialisation’ and ‘Communitisation’ of premodern inscriptions

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Spring School in Epigraphy: “Socialisation” and “Communitisation” of Pre-modern Inscriptions, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 17/18 April 2023

A multitude of inscriptions carved into one and the same object or brought together in a common spatial as well as thematic context – this is a phenomenon often encountered in the study of pre- modern inscriptions: The “condensation” of “hic-fuit” graffiti on a portion of a wall as a common support or the surface of a frequently visited funerary monument over a longer period of time, would be widely familiar examples. Likewise, with the long-term use of prominent burial sites – an ancient necropolis or a medieval cloister, for example – there is a gradual increase in the number of grave monuments that share the available space and inevitably refer to each other through their original location.

Ancient and post-ancient epigraphic research usually describes the two groups of inscriptions mentioned above as inscription ensembles, an expression that rather describes the result of a “coincidental” growth of several “autonomous” inscribed objects in the same space. In fact, however, the spatial distribution of the adjacent inscriptions already points at a more or less extensive interrelation of the respective inscriptions, in the context of which not only the inscribed objects, but also their inscriptions and the “layout” of the stones influence each other, or even before the installation of new inscriptions helped to determine their shape and content. The concept of “Vergesellschaftung/socialization” and “Vergemeinschaftung/communitisation” of inscriptions, which has only recently been introduced into the scholarly discussion2 and refers to a term from sociological and archaeological research, seems to express the actual relationships of the monuments (and their commissioners) to and among each other and the spatial and social context of their design and placement better than the usual “ensemble”, which in the literal sense of the word would describe either a “uniform” or “homogeneous” or a merely coincidental co-existence of various inscriptions.

The planned Spring School encourages participants to consider the applicability of this new theoretical concept for epigraphic research from antiquity and post-antiquity and addresses primarily younger researchers, especially those who are working on relevant academic qualification theses. The first day of the Spring School, which will be held as a hybrid event (on-site and via Zoom), will introduce the concept to participants in several keynote lectures or case studies. The participants are in turn expected to present their respective topics from the point of view of “socialization” and “communitisation” and to explore the opportunities and limits of this concept in plenary discourse. The second day of the event will take participants to the Augustinian canons’ monastery of Klosterneuburg near Vienna, where the insights gained on the previous day will be tested in practice on the ancient (dislocated) and medieval (preserved in situ) inscriptions extant in the epigraphic collection and the cloister.

Those interested in participating are invited to apply by 19 March 2023 with a short letter of motivation and an outline of the planned thesis (max. 400 words; please write to veronika.scheibelreiter@oeaw.ac.at; andreas.rhoby@oeaw.ac.at; andreas.zajic@oeaw.ac.at). Please indicate whether you wish to participate on site or virtually (only possible for day 1). Participation is free of charge; participants are however responsible for organising and financing their own travel and accommodation. Unless otherwise agreed, the common language of the event will be English.

 

Summer University in Eastern Languages, Venice 2023

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The Summer University in Eastern Languages 2023, which will take place in Venice, Italy, in July, has been announced. 18 ancient and modern languages of the Middle East are open for teaching this year, in a beautiful setting, the island of San Servolo. Minor courses, visits and a lecture are also on the program. The Summer University is French-speaking, but many instructors will be pleased to give classes in English, according to the needs of the students. More details online: https://www.unil.ch/summerschools/langues-orient

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