The Late Byzantine Mediterranean: Byzantine Connectivities, Experiences and Identities in a Fragmented World
2022 Virtual Byzantine Colloquium
In memoriam
Speros Vryonis, Jr. (1928-2019)
Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (1931-2018)
7-8 June 2022
Senate House, University of London
Gedenkveranstaltung für ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Wolfram HÖRANDNER (1942-2021)
23.05.2022
mit Vorträgen von
Panagiotis Agapitos / Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Diskrete Innovation und handwerklicher Modernismus: Zum Werk von Wolfram Hörandner
Martin Hinterberger / Universität Zypern
Eine stille Revolution: Wolfram Hörandner zur byzantinischen Sprachkunst in Lehre und Forschung
Zeit: Montag, 23. Mai 2022, 16 Uhr s.t.
Ort:Erika Weinzierl-Saal, Hauptgebäude der Universität Wien, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien
Präsenzteilnahme: Anmeldung bei petra.greger@univie.ac.at
und online (Registrierung unbedingt erforderlich)
Southeast European Silversmithing: Liturgical Objects and the Construction of a Cultural, Technological and Iconographical Network in the Early Modern Period
The conference is scheduled to take place on 4th-5th November 2022. Due to the ongoing epidemiological situation, postponement until Spring 2023 is possible. The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, with the option of remote participation online.
To submit, please provide your full name, title, affiliation, and the theme of your conference paper with a 400 words abstract written in English. The deadline for submissions is 1st June 2022. You should also provide a short personal bio (max. 300 words) and photo for use on the conference website. Prospective conference participants will be notified if their paper has been accepted no later than by 10th June 2022. The conference will be held entirely in English. All information about the conference, including participants, proposal themes and abstracts will be made available on the conference website. A collection of papers is planned following the conference.
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)
