Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS) and Austrian Association for Byzantine Studies (ÖBG) Joint Lecture
Tuesday, 24 May 2022 at 17:00 (London), 18:00 (Vienna) over Zoom
The Byzantine Empire and the Shape of Afro-Eurasia Today (and Tomorrow)
Dr Rebecca Darley (University of Leeds)
Between the fourth century and the eleventh, the Byzantine Empire was the hinge point in a power shift that continues to shape global geopolitics today. In the fourth century the Mediterranean was a Roman sea. Italy was closer culturally and politically to North Africa than to France or Germany, the Mediterranean coast of West Asia to Greece and even the Iberian peninsula than to southern Arabia. By the eleventh century the Mediterranean was divided more-or-less on a Northwest to Southeast axis between increasingly mutually self-defining Islamicate and Christian spheres. It was becoming increasingly normal for political leaders and social commentators to think of social solidarity being defined by this line and military mobilisation crossing it. This much has not gone unnoticed in world history, though it can too easily be re-imagined by politicians as an eternal state of affairs. The critical role that Byzantium played in this transformation, however, and the role that Byzantine studies has to play in understanding it has, however, been less well-explored. This lecture will examine Byzantium as a consistent challenge to efforts to define Europe, the world and the Mediterranean as a battleground between East and West, Muslim and Christian, ‘us’ and ‘other’.
Respondent: Dr Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Via the Director’s Office, Dumbarton Oaks We write with great sadness to inform you that Susan A. Boyd, Curator emerita of the Byzantine collection at Dumbarton Oaks, passed away on May 5. A native of Washington, DC., Sue Boyd (as she was known to her colleagues) had a long and distinguished career at Dumbarton Oaks from 1963 to 2004. She started as Assistant for the Collection and was named Curator in 1979. Boyd curated or co-curated several exhibitions, including on “Gifts from the Byzantine Court,” on icons, and ivories. She was editor of the Byzantine collection publications and published widely on Byzantine art, especially early Christian liturgical silver plate, early Christian mural decoration of churches, and 12th-13th century Byzantine wall paintings. She was elected twice to the Governing Board of the Byzantine Studies Conference and was elected to the U.S. National Committee for Byzantine Studies in 1982.
At the beginning of her extraordinary tenure, Boyd met founder Mildred Bliss, and over four decades at Dumbarton Oaks she witnessed and contributed to developments such as the growth of public exhibitions, scholarly programs, and publications. Her unique perspective on the history of Dumbarton Oaks and the Byzantine collection is recorded in an oral history with former Museum Director Gudrun Bühl that can be found here (https://www.doaks.org/research/library-archives/dumbarton-oaks-archives/historical-records/oral-history-project/susan-a-boyd). Her involvement with the important Dumbarton Oaks-funded excavation and restoration projects in Istanbul and Cyprus is recorded in another oral history with the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives here (https://www.doaks.org/research/library-archives/dumbarton-oaks-archives/historical-records/oral-history-project/susan-boyd-icfa).
Post-Doctoral Fellow in Byzantine Coins
Dumbarton Oaks invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Fellow to work with the museum team on projects relating to cataloging, publication, and exhibition of the coin collection. The successful candidate will receive training in digital cataloging, collections management, and exhibition planning. They will catalogue the newly acquired Mansfield and Shaw collections of early Byzantine coins, describing, recording, and publishing these coins in the Online Coin Catalogue. They will also work with the Collections Manager and Registrar to accession and house the coins. Building on the work of nomisma.org the Post-Doctoral Fellow will be involved in the establishment of a federated database to catalogue and digitize Byzantine coin holdings in various collections worldwide. In partnership with the Associate Curator and the Manager of Exhibitions, they will help to create temporary exhibits of the coin collection and take part in the planning and execution of educational activities. The fellowship offers unique opportunities to build career skills in digital humanities, museum curation, and collections-based education. The Fellow will participate fully in Dumbarton Oaks’ dynamic community of scholars and programming in Byzantine Studies and will devote 20% of the fellowship time to personal research.
Application deadline: June 15, 2022
Publication announcement
Inventer les anges de l’Antiquité à Byzance: conception, représentation, perception
edited by Delphine Lauritzen
Travaux et mémoires 25/2 (2021)
The Holy Rus’: Concept and Religious Art with Political Connotations
May 19th, 2022 at 12:00 pm EDT
Virtual Lecture by Mariana Levytska
The notion of Holy Rus’, constructed throughout Russian imperial history is important for understanding this “sacred space,” and the elucidation of the links between religion, politics and art, reveals one of the mechanisms for spreading this doctrine, raised to a sacred level. Pochayiv monastery which has existed for centuries as one of the most important Ukrainian sacred places (Christian—Orthodox, Uniate, and even Catholic) is a vivid example of how theology can be transformed into ideology. This lecture is focused on the consequences of the political transformations of Ukrainian religious art in the nineteenth century, after the forced transfer of the shrine of the Ukrainian Uniate to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The aim of this paper is the analysis of how religious art in Pochayiv became a visual tool in the implementation of the Holy Rus’ concept through analysis of Pochayiv monastery’s architecture, icons and decorative artefacts as well as historical documents and the monastery’s chronicles. It can be argued that new imperial authorities legitimized their reign not only “through the law of force”, but also “through the power of tradition” (Edward W. Said), addressing both history and faith.
Bibliography
Dmytro Chizhevsky (1959), Edward Kinnan (2003), Valter Lang (2003), Eric J. Hobsbaum & Terence Ranger (2005), Ewa Thompson (2006 ), Alain Besançon (2012), Martin C. Putna (2015).
This lecture is part of a series of events co-organized by Dumbarton Oaks in collaboration with North of Byzantium and Connected Central European Worlds, 1500–1700.
Sponsors and Endorsers: Dumbarton Oaks | Princeton University | Boise State University | Tufts University College Art Association (CAA) | Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) | Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) | Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent | Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art (HGSCEA) | British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) | International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) | Renaissance Society of America (RSA)
The Byzantinist Society of Cyprus is organizing an online lecture series under the general title “Mediterranean Crossroads”. During the first cycle of the series (Spring-Summer 2022), Professors Judith Herrin, Alessandro Taddei and Athanasios Markopoulos will offer presentations shedding light on different aspects of Byzantine history and culture. The lecture series aims at the promotion of Byzantine and Medieval Studies through the research perspectives of leading international scholars. Cyprus and the Mediterranean have been at the crossroads of history and culture and as such the lectures highlight the work and the
mission of the Byzantinist Society of Cyprus.
The second lecture which is scheduled for Thursday, 19 May at 19:00 (ΕΕΤ) will be offered by Alessandro Taddei, Ricercatore a tempo determinato, Università degli Studi “La Sapienza” di Roma, with the title “The early life of the Megale Ekklesia of Constantinople (4th-5th century). History and architecture”.
The lecture is free and open to the wider public through the following
link:
Meeting link:
https://byzantinistsociety.my.webex.com/byzantinistsociety.my/j.php?MTID=m5bd63f281032a8c0bdc38b4e35bd073f
Meeting number:
2550 894 8763
Meeting password:
yS2FTe2wY52
Join from a video or application
Dial 25508948763@webex.com
You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number.
Meeting password for video system
97238329
Join by phone
+1-650-479-3208 United States Toll
Access code: 25508948763
Global call-in numbers
https://byzantinistsociety.my.webex.com/byzantinistsociety.my/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&eventID=1561006057&tollFree=0
Meeting password for audio
97238329
The Index of Medieval Art invites applications for a four-month, remote, part-time research position to assist in incorporating key mosaics and paintings of medieval Kyiv into the Index database. This position is made possible by a 2022 Flash Grant from the Princeton University Humanities Council and consists of a $5,000 honorarium to be directed to the scholar.
The successful applicant should have relevant training in art history, preferably with a medievalist background, and should hold a doctorate or have completed all but the dissertation. Applicants may be of any nationality, but preference will be given to a scholar whose work has been disrupted by the crisis in Ukraine. A reading knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian is preferable.
The work position will require roughly two days a week of remote work over a four-month period, beginning in summer of 2022. The successful applicant will work with the Index research staff to catalogue Ukrainian monuments, beginning with the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. They will be trained in Index norms in cataloging the monumental structure, describing the iconography of its paintings and mosaics, transcribing inscriptions, and adding bibliographic citations, Index subjects, and other metadata. Staff guidance and scans of the relevant print material will be provided. The timeline for this work is somewhat flexible but must be completed by the end of the funded period, December 31, 2022.
To apply, please send a CV and letter of interest to marossi@princeton.edu and ppatton@princeton.edu by June 1, 2022
The Department of Greek and Latin, University College London, is looking to appoint a Research Fellow to work on the project Hexameters Beyond the Canon: New Poetry on Papyri from Roman and Byzantine Egypt (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW003554%2F1). The Research Fellow will catalogue and produce editions of unpublished hexameter papyri from Oxyrhynchus, input data to the project’s website and digital archive, contribute to the revision of editions by other scholars, take part in regular meetings, help organize events connected with the grant, and participate in outreach activities.
The position is available from 1 June 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter, and is funded until 31 March 2026. The salary for this post is at Grade 7, commencing at £36,770 p.a., inclusive of London weighting if the post-holder is based in London. A job description and person specification are available on the UCL jobs website (https://static.wcn.co.uk/company/ucl/search_engine.html Ref. No.: 1883182).
Applications, which should include a CV and a personal statement indicating the candidate’s suitability for the post, should be made online via the UCL jobs website and should arrive by 23:59 on 24 May 2022. Please also arrange for two academic referees to write confidentially to Mr Robbie Macaulay (robbie.macaulay@ucl.ac.uk) by the closing date.
Informal enquiries may be made to N. Gonis (n.gonis@ucl.ac.uk).
