Joan and Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship at the Athenian Agora

Posted on March 30, 2024 by bsanacom

JOAN AND EUGENE VANDERPOOL FELLOWSHIP AT THE ATHENIAN AGORA

Deadline: May 15, 2024

The Joan and Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship at the Athenian Agora supports research on any aspect of the Athenian Agora, including history, archaeology, literature, epigraphy, architecture, art history, and biodiversity.

Eligibility: PhD holders and graduate students working on any aspect of the Athenian Agora from antiquity to the present are eligible. As noted, the fields of study may include, but are not limited to, all aspects of the history and material culture of the site. Open to all nationalities.

Terms: The School awards at least one fellowship each year. The fellowship includes a stipend of $5,000 and a waiver of membership fees for the duration of residency in Athens while working on the proposed project (a maximum of two months membership fees covered). Costs of travel, lodging, board, visas, and incidentals can be paid from the stipend. Applicants may also include costs for the photographs/photographic permission and preparation of illustrations in their budgets. Applicants should specify and justify the proposed duration of work in Athens and related costs. The award is to be used between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. A final report is due at the end of the award period. The ASCSA expects that all publications that result from research conducted as a Fellow of the ASCSA acknowledge the support of the ASCSA and that copies be contributed to the appropriate library of the School and to Agora’s research library.

Application: Submit an online application form for the “Joan and Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship.” An application consists of a curriculum vitae, description of the proposed project (up to 750 words), a timeline and budget of the proposed project, and two letters of reference to be submitted online. Student applicants must submit transcripts. Scans of official transcripts are acceptable.

Link to online application.

Link to online posting.

Questions? Contact: application@ascsa.org

The award will be announced by June 15, 2024.

CFP: Hellenic Research Fellowship Program (and new writer-in-residence)

Updated on March 30, 2024 by bsanacom

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Call for Applications:

Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection

Hellenic Research Fellowship Program 2024-2025

Thanks to generous funding from the Tarbell Family Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Endowment Fund of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation of Sacramento, the University Library at California State University, Sacramento is pleased to offer the continuation of the Hellenic Research Fellowship Program (HRFP) for a 12th year. The HRFP, the only residential fellowship program west of the Mississippi in Hellenic studies broadly conceived, enables visiting scholars to conduct research using the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection in Sacramento, CA. This year we are happy to inaugurate writer-in-residence fellowships as an addition to the Program. The HRFP provides a limited number of fellowships in the form of reimbursement to help offset transportation and living expenses incurred in connection with the awards. The fellowship application deadline is May 3, 2024. No late applications will be considered. See below for full program information and application instructions.

Consisting of the holdings of the former Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism, the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, part of the Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections and University Archives, is a research collection of international significance for the campus and Sacramento regional communities, as well as for scholars around the globe. Currently numbering over 80,000 volumes and 500 linear feet of personal papers and institutional archives, it comprises a large circulating book collection, journal holdings, electronic resources, non-print media, rare books, archival materials, art, and artifacts. With its focus on the Hellenic world, the collection contains materials from antiquity to the present across the social sciences and humanities relating to Greece, its neighboring countries, and the surrounding region. There is a broad representation of languages in the collection, with a rich assortment of primary source materials. For further information about the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, visit https://library.csus.edu/tsakopoulos.

For the full Hellenic Research Fellowship Program description, application instructions, and list of previous fellows, see: https://library.csus.edu/tsakopoulos-hellenic-collection/hrfp. Questions about the Program can be directed to George I. Paganelis, Curator, Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection (paganelis@csus.edu).

Lecture: “”From Porphyry to Obsidian and the Mysteries of Materials”

Updated on March 30, 2024 by bsanacom

Tom Cummins, Director of Dumbarton Oaks, will present an upcoming talk, “From Porphyry to Obsidian and the Mysteries of Materials: Two Portable Altars in the Dumbarton Oaks Collections,” at the Gennadius Library.

The talk will be held on Tuesday, April 9, at 12:00 pm US/EDT and 7:00 pm (Greece). Registration is available here for in-person or zoom attendance. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

‘Justice in Byzantium’ hybrid conference

Updated on March 25, 2024 by bsanacom

The deadline for registering for the hybrid conference, ‘Justice in Byzantium’, at the University of Kent, UK, is April 5^th. The programme is below.

https://kx-web.kent.ac.uk/KxRegistration/Registration/Welcome.aspx?e=D016C7487566B5EEE19461B8ABD4B065

For any queries, please contact Anne Alwis (a.p.alwis@kent.ac.uk).

SPBS 2024 SPRING SYMPOSIUM

JUSTICE IN BYZANTIUM

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

SATURDAY 13^TH – MONDAY 15^TH APRIL 2024

SATURDAY 13^th APRIL

The conference will take place in the Templeman Lecture Theatre

8:30-9.45am Registration Templeman Foyer (Templeman Library)

9:45 Welcome: Anne Alwis and Laura Franco (Kent; Tor Vergata) and Tribute to Elisabeth Jeffreys and Bob Ousterhout

10:00-11:45 Session 1: Social Justice

Chair: Gavriil Boutziopoulos (Birmingham)

Dionysios Stathakopoulos (Cyprus) ONLINE: ‘Social Justice and Economic Concerns in the Late-Byzantine World’
Arietta Papaconstantinou (Aix-Marseille): ‘Petition, Protection and Patronage: Negotiating Social Justice in Village Communities’
Carlos Machado (St Andrews) ONLINE: ‘Social Justice and Subaltern Experience in Late-Antique Italy’

11.45-12.45 Communications I

Chair: Laura Franco (Tor Vergata)

Elizabeth Buchanan (Findlay): ‘Justice and Intercession: Religious views on the afterlife of souls as a mirror for popular views of justice in Byzantium’
Romain Goudjil (Sorbonne): ‘How to take legal action in Byzantium (10th-15th centuries). A practical perspective’
Valerio Massimo Minale (Naples): ‘The Animals in the Isaurian Ekloge’

12.45-14:00 Lunch: Rutherford Dining Hall (self-service)

Meeting of Graduate students (plus sandwich lunch): Templeman seminar room 1

14:00-15.10 Session 2: Unwritten Rules

Chair: Anne Alwis (Kent)

Rosemary Morris (York): ‘Why Write it Down? The Transition from the Spoken to the Written Word in Monastic Typika’
Anna Kelley (St Andrews): ‘“After God it is your help I look for”: Holy intermediaries and Unwritten Routes towards Women’s Justice in Byzantine Egypt’

15:10-16:00 Coffee: Templeman Foyer

16:00-17:00 Communications II

Chair: Liz James (Sussex)

Sarah Mathiesen (Florida State): ‘Eavesdropping: Crime and Punishment in a Cappadocian Rock-Cut Church’
Magdalena Laptas (Warsaw): ‘Christ as the Sun of Justice with the Archangels and Holy Warriors in Nubian Art’
Francesco Muraca (Bologna) ONLINE: ‘The δικαιοδότης: the Byzantine iuridicus?’

17:00-17:30 KEYNOTE: Daphne Penna (Groningen) ‘Justice in Byzantium: Blind or Biased?’

17.30-18.30 Reception sponsored by SPBS: Templeman Foyer

18.30-20.30 Dinner: Rutherford Dining Hall (self-service)

SUNDAY 14^th APRIL

9.00-9.30 Coffee: Templeman Foyer

9:30–10:40 Session 3: Criminal Justice

Chair: Ed Roberts (Kent)

Lorena Atzeri (Milan): ‘Criminal Justice in Byzantium (C8^th-11^th): Offences, Punishments, and Deterrence from the Ecloga to the Peira’
Mike Humphreys (Oxford): ‘Mutilation in Byzantine Law: The Case of Nose Amputation’

10:40-11:00 Coffee: Templeman Foyer

11:00–12:10 Session 4: Revenge

Chair: Laura Franco (Tor Vergata)

Francesca Barone (CNRS): ‘Forms and Functions of Punishment in early Egyptian Monasticism’

Robert Wiśniewski (Warsaw): ‘Martyrs Strike Back: Martyrdom and Revenge in Late-Antique Hagiography’

12:10-12:45 Communications III

Chair: Fiona Haarer (KCL)

Marina Detoraki (Crete) ONLINE: ‘Punishment and Reward in Beneficial Tales (or Divine Justice in Doubt)’
Arkady Avodokhin (Oxford): ‘Tough Justice from Above: Avenging Saints in Late-Antique Miracle Collections and Inscribed Artefacts’

12.45-14:00 LUNCH: Rutherford Dining Hall (self-service)

Meeting of TTB editorial board: Templeman seminar room 1; sandwich lunch)

Meeting of SPBS Executive Committee: Templeman seminar room 3; sandwich lunch)

14:00-16:35 Session 5: Civil Law and Justice

Chair: Judith Herrin (KCL)

Peter Sarris (Cambridge): ‘Justinian and the “Temple of Justice”’
Matthijs Wibier (Cincinnati) ONLINE: ‘New Thoughts on the Law School in Beirut and the Justinianic Antecessores’
Simon Corcoran (Newcastle): ‘Manumission and Freed-Persons in the Roman Legal tradition from Justinian I to Leo VI and beyond’
Caroline Humfress (St Andrews) ONLINE: “Cosmas’ ‘Contract’: Constituted Living in Late Antiquity.”

16:35-17:00 Coffee: Templeman Foyer

17:00-18:00 Communications IV

Chair: Judith Ryder (Oxford)

Arie Neuhauser (Chicago): ‘Standards of Just Conduct in Eleventh-Century Civil Wars’
James Cogbill (Oxford): ‘The Late Byzantine Aristocracy as Upholders of Justice in Fourteenth-Century Historiography’
Nikolas Hächler (Zurich): ‘Ordering the State: Observations on Notions of Justice for the Organization of the Early Byzantine Empire in the Dialogus de Scientia Politica’

18:00-19:00 Drinks’ Reception: Darwin Conference Suite

19:00-22:00 Conference Feast: Darwin Suite

MONDAY 15^th APRIL

9:00-9.30 Arrival coffee: Templeman Foyer

9:30-10:30 Communications V

Chair: Anne Alwis (Kent)

Paolo Angelini (Italian Ministero dell’Interno): ‘Byzantine Criminal Law: Concepts, Influence and Reception in the Slavic World’
Ziyao Zhu (King’s College, London): ‘A Less Successful Endeavour to Define Terminology: The Dispute over the Appropriation of the Church’s Assets under Alexios I Komnenos’
Luke Lavan (Kent): ‘Reconstructing the Late-Antique Law Court: Evidence Clusters and Evidence Gaps’

10:30-10.45 Coffee: Templeman Foyer

10:45-12:30 Session 6: Divine Justice

Chair: Dunstan Lowe (Kent)

Maroula Perisanidi (Leeds): ‘Voices of Divine Justice: Exploring Disability, Speech, anand Speechlessness in Byzantium’
Dan Reynolds (Birmingham): ‘By the Rivers of Babylon: Retribution and Divine Justice in Strategios of Mar Sabas’ Capture of Jerusalem (614)’
Shaun Tougher (Cardiff): ‘God and the Macedonians: Dynasty and Divine Justice’

Announcement of next year’s Symposium

12:45-14:00 SPBS AGM

15:00 Visit to the Archives of Canterbury Cathedral [OPTIONAL]; meet outside the entrance to the Cathedral

British Library, Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts

Updated on March 19, 2024 by bsanacom

British Library, Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts (Classical, Biblical and Byzantine)

The British Library holds an internationally renowned collection of manuscripts relating to the ancient and medieval world. As Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts, with a special responsibility for Classical, Biblical and Byzantine manuscripts, you will use innovative and traditional ways of interpreting and presenting these collections through online resources and engagement with academic and general users. You will also use your specialist knowledge to support the development, management and promotion of the ancient and medieval collections.

With a post-graduate degree, or equivalent, in a relevant subject, you will have extensive experience of research in Classical, Biblical and/or Byzantine Studies. Strong knowledge of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek, excellent written and oral communication skills in English, and the ability to promote the collections to a wide range of audiences are essential.

As one of the world’s great libraries, our duty is to preserve the nation’s intellectual memory for the future and make it available to all for research, inspiration and enjoyment. At present, we have well over 170 million items, in most known languages, with three million new items added every year. We have manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, and patents. We make our collections and programmes available to all. We operate the world’s largest document delivery service providing millions of items a year to customers all over the world. What matters to us is that we preserve the national memory and enable knowledge to be created both now and in the future by anyone, anywhere.

In return, we offer a competitive salary and a number of excellent benefits. Our pension scheme is one of the most valuable benefits we offer, as our staff can become members of the Alpha Pension Scheme where the Library contributes a minimum of 26.6% (this may be higher dependant on grade. Another significant benefit the Library provides is the provision of a flexible working hours scheme which could allow you to work your hours flexibly over the week and to take up to 5 days flexi leave in a 3 month period. This is on top of 25 days holiday from entry and public and privilege holidays.

Closing date 7 April 2024

For more information and to apply see https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DGL381/curator-of-ancient-and-medieval-manuscripts

Online Lecture: Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia

Updated on March 19, 2024 by bsanacom

Online Lecture: Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2023–2024 lecture series.Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT | Zoom
Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia
Jordan Pickett, University of Georgia

The largest standing architecture at the ruined city of Sardis is not its famous Temple of Artemis, the fourth largest Ionic temple of antiquity, but is instead the massive but little-published fortification that sits on its Acropolis. This paper delivers preliminary results from new study of the Byzantine fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis, part of the larger Harvard-Cornell Exploration of Sardis ongoing since 1958. Composed entirely of thousands of architectural blocks and sculpture recycled from older Iron Age and Roman monuments of Sardis, our understanding of the Acropolis fortifications hinges on three questions considered here. How has the Acropolis, composed of extraordinarily friable loose conglomerate subject to erosion and earthquake, changed since Antiquity? When were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Possibilities range from c. 550 during the reign of Justinian to as late as c. 850. And, how and by whom were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Set at a remarkably steep elevation, the labor for transport and construction with reused materials was extraordinary. No minor monument of the “Dark Ages”, the fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis stand as a remarkably well-preserved complex of defensive architecture that sheds light on the priorities and capacities of communities in Byzantine Anatolia.

Jordan Pickett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia and co-PI, with Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University), for Acropolis investigation for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey, under the director of Nick Cahill (University of Wisconsin).

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/recycled_cities

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

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 50th Annual BSC

Updated on March 19, 2024 by bsanacom

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for Mary Jaharis Center sponsored sessions at the 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held in New York City, October 24–27, 2024. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is April 3, 2024.

If the proposed session is accepted, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 5 session participants (presenters and chair) up to $800 maximum for scholars based in North America and up to $1400 maximum for those coming from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/50th-bsc

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

Sacred Presence: Virgin of Kazan at The Icon Museum

Updated on March 14, 2024 by bsanacom

The Icon Museum and Study Center presents Sacred Presence: Virgin of Kazan, an exhibition celebrating the beauty and spiritual significance of the Kazanskaya Mother of God icon.

March 22, 2024 – August 25, 2024

CLINTON, MA (March 7, 2024) –– The Icon Museum and Study Center is pleased to present Sacred Presence: Virgin of Kazan, an intimate exhibition celebrating the beauty and spiritual significance of the Kazanskaya Mother of God icon from March 22, 2024 – August 25, 2024. This focus exhibit, guest curated by author and docent, Dennis J. Sardella, highlights a magnificent version of the icon in the Museum’s collection. The exhibition will also feature a selection of icons and objects related to this important image, hidden treasures from the Museum’s vault, some of which will be on view for the first time.

The Kazan Mother of God (Kazanskaya Bogomater’ in Russian) is a highly revered icon, beloved of the people and hailed as a holy protectress. For centuries people prayed before the Kazan Mother of God for support and protection, couples were blessed with it before their marriages, and people hung it by their children’s cribs and in places of honor in their homes, turning to it whenever they faced trouble, disease, and misfortune. The Kazanskaya was also called upon for assistance in times of national peril. By the end of the nineteenth century there were thousands of icons of the Kazan Mother of God in Russian homes. The Icon Museum and Study Center is home to different examples of this iconography.

Sacred Presence: Virgin of Kazan tells the story of this image through the lens of a single seventeenth-century icon, which is one of the highlights in the Museum’s collection. This monumental icon, painted around 1650, dates to less than seventy-five years after the Kazanskaya cult of devotion was founded. The icon’s size, the iconographer’s warm color palette, and the imposing figure of the Mother of God, who is dressed in a purple mantle (maphorion), enables the panel to command the space around it, whereas the gentle melancholy of the Virgin’s gaze has an almost magnetic attraction.

Guest Curator, Dennis J. Sardella, will lead several gallery talks discussing reflections on the Kazanskaya icon of the Mother of God, its iconography, form, spiritual journey, allure, and beauty, as well as its cooption by political and religious actors up to our modern times. Sardella will be available after each gallery talk to sign copies of his book, Visible Image of the Invisible God. Sardella’s book is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated introduction to icons, their origins, history, and symbolism. It will be available for sale in The Icon Museum and Study Center gift shop during the exhibition.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dennis J. Sardella, PhD has been a docent at the Museum for twelve years, where he leads gallery tours and introduces visitors to the world of Byzantine and Russian icons. He writes and speaks regularly to civic and church groups on the topics of religious icons and the role they play in Eastern Christian spirituality — at last count, nearly fifty presentations.

A professor of chemistry at Boston College for forty-five years, Sardella taught and researched the areas of spectroscopy and molecular structure. In 1990 he became the founding director of the Boston College Presidential Scholars Program, a university-wide co-curricular honors program, and directed it until 2010.

ABOUT THE ICON MUSEUM AND STUDY CENTER

The Icon Museum and Study Center (formerly The Museum of Russian Icons), founded in 2006 by the American entrepreneur Gordon Lankton, holds the most comprehensive collection of icons in the US, including a growing collection of Greek, Veneto-Cretan, and Ethiopian icons. Spanning over six centuries, the collection showcases the development of the icon from its Egyptian and Byzantine roots and explores the spread of Orthodoxy across cultures. The Museum serves as a place for education, contemplation, and experiencing the beauty and spirituality of icons. The permanent collection and temporary exhibitions offer unparalleled opportunities to situate Eastern Christian art within a global context and to explore its connection to contemporary concerns and ideas. The Museum’s Study Center stimulates object-based learning and multidisciplinary research and aims to share its research in the field of Eastern Christian art with wide audiences through an active slate of academic and public programs.

VISIT THE MUSEUM:
Thursday – Sunday, 10AM – 4PM. The Museum is closed Monday–Wednesday.

Admission: Adults $15, seniors (65+) $12, Students (with ID) FREE, Children and Youth (0-17) FREE.

Follow The Icon Museum and Study Center on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Visit the website, www.iconmuseum.org, home of the online collection (including research papers on individual icons), the Journal of Icon Studies, and the British Museum’s catalogue of Byzantine and Greek icons.

For more information, high-res images, or to arrange an interview, contact:

Danielle Shabo, Mgr. of Marketing at d.shabo@iconmuseum.org (Wed – Fri) or (978) 598 5000 ext 125

Anna Farwell, Marketing Coordinator at a.farwell@iconmuseum.org or (978) 598 5000 ext 118

SPBS Virtual Event | Dumbarton Oaks Collections Tour

Updated on March 14, 2024 by bsanacom

The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies is pleased to invite you to join our upcoming Dumbarton Oaks Collections Virtual Tour, delivered by Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, curator of the Byzantine Collections.

Venue: Online

Date: Mon 25th March 2024

Time: 6:00PM (UK time)

You can find out more about this event and book your place here.

Two Symposium Announcements (Madrid and Barcelona)

Updated on March 14, 2024 by bsanacom

Event 1:

A one-day international symposium on the Skylitzes Matritensis will be held at the National Library of Spain, Madrid, on June 13^th, 2024.

THE SKYLITZES MATRITENSIS, BYZANTIUM AND NORMAN SICILY: New and Old Issues on an Exceptional Greek Manuscript

The aim of this international symposium on the Sykilitzes Matritensis (BNE, Vitr. 26-2) is to delve into one of the most precious manuscripts of the National Library of Spain, which still poses many issues to scholars today.

It is the oldest and most extensive surviving copy of an illustrated Byzantine chronicle, the Synopsis Historiarum by John Skylitzes, containing 574 miniatures. The manuscript was produced in the mid-12th century in Sicily, during the Norman period, and its creation involved two scribes and seven miniaturists with very different artistic backgrounds. This reveals the multicultural environment of the island, where Latin, Greek, and Muslim cultures coexisted. Scholars will approach various aspects of the manuscript from a multidisciplinary perspective -paleographic, codicological, philological, and historical-artistic -, and address some issues related to its commissioning, place of production and creative process, from the materials used by the miniaturists to their working methods. It will be an outstanding occasion to rediscover Byzantium, the fascination for Constantinople, as well as some aspects of the12th-century Sicilian culture.

Free entrance

For further information, please contact: info@mabilus.com

Live streaming on the BNE YouTube channel

Event 2:

A one-day International Seminar on Byzantine Manuscripts will be held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), on May 17^th, 2024.

BYZANTINE MANUSCRIPTS. New Insights into the Study of Byzantine Manuscripts: Text, Image, and Liturgy.

II MABILUS International Seminar

Dir. Manuel Castiñeiras

The study of Byzantine manuscripts has undergone a deep transformation in recent years. Digitization, laboratory analysis techniques and interdisciplinary projects have allowed a better knowledge of a very valuable written and illuminated heritage which, in the case of Spain, is very well represented in the collection of the National Library of Madrid and the Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. On the occasion of this international seminar, a series of experiences in the field of Byzantinology will be presented. They are helping to enhance and disseminate the Byzantine legacy from a wide range of perspectives. These talks will be complemented by the presentation of the book, The Akathistos Hymnos and Intermedial Compositional Processes in Later Byzantium-Sung, Written, Painted, edited by Jon C. Cubas(Palgrave, Cham, 2024).

Free entrance

For further information, please contact: info@mabilus.com