Announcements

Assistant Professor of Art History (tenure track), Clark University

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Assistant Professor of Art History (tenure track), Clark University

Art Historian in Art/ Archaeology of the Ancient or Medieval Mediterranean World, including North Africa. Assistant Professor, tenure track. Requirements: Ph.D. in Art History or Archaeology, teaching experience, and active research record. Teaching requirements are 4 undergraduate courses per year (2/2), including introductory courses and upper-level seminars in the area of expertise, as well as contributing to core courses in the art history major. Clark University, Worcester, MA is a private, liberal arts & sciences research university offering an undergraduate degree in art history in the context of a multi-disciplinary Department of Visual and Performing Arts. The successful candidate will be able to incorporate their own research interests into the classroom curriculum, and to mentor, advise, and generate enthusiasm among art history majors and students in related arts disciplines. Research experience that brings critical approaches to the study of ancient or medieval art of the Mediterranean world is highly desirable, and may involve topics such as: colonialism/anti-colonialism; migration and translation; gender in built environments and/or artworks; material culture and issues of cultural assimilation; race and ethnicity; museum and cultural heritage issues surrounding ancient art. As a secondary field, we are interested in candidates who use innovative digital tools in their research programs, but this is not a requirement. Clark University is an institutional member of the Worcester Art Museum, allowing students and faculty first-hand study of ancient and medieval artworks and artifacts.

We ask that you submit the following items:

– a cover letter;
– curriculum vitae;
– names and contact information for three references;
– statement describing how you address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, and
challenges faced by historically underrepresented groups, based on race/ethnicity, women, veterans, people with disabilities or other groups that have been historically excluded from higher education. Please offer your thoughts on how you would address these issues in your future role as a faculty member at Clark. This may include research, teaching/pedagogy, mentoring, service to the profession and community outreach (1 page maximum).

Application deadline is: December 1, 2022

Clark University embraces equal opportunity as a core value: we believe that cultivating an environment that embraces and promotes diversity is fundamental to the success of our students, our employees and our community. This commitment applies to every aspect of education, services, and employment policies and practices at Clark. Our commitment to diversity informs our efforts in recruitment, hiring and retention. All positions at Clark share in the responsibility for building a community that values diversity and the uniqueness of others by exhibiting integrity and respect in interacting with all members of the Clark community to create an atmosphere of fairness and belonging. We strongly encourage members from historically underrepresented communities, inclusive of all women, to apply.

About Clark University:
Founded in 1887, Clark was one of the first all-graduate institutions in the United States. Today the University is a highly-ranked, student-centered institution educating approximately 2,350 undergraduate and 1,150 graduate students to be imaginative and contributing citizens of the world and to advance the frontiers of knowledge and understanding through rigorous scholarship and creative effort. This dedication to scholarship and inquiry reflects the University’s commitment to “challenge convention and change our world” and to address issues of critical importance to society. It is also reflected by Clark’s many national and international distinctions, including recognition for its diversity and inclusion efforts, innovation, community engagement and impact, as a top green campus, and for having a distinguished geography and international development program. Clark has also been included in the groundbreaking Colleges that Change Lives guide since it was first published in 1996.

Clark is located in Worcester, Massachusetts, a dynamic, diverse city. The second largest city in New England, Worcester is home to 11 institutions of higher learning and is increasingly recognized for its growing healthcare and biotechnology communities, its thriving cultural scene, and as a vibrant food hub.

 

Dumbarton Oaks Papers: BSC informal information session

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Colin M. Whiting, one of the editors of Dumbarton Oaks Papers, would like to extend an invitation to any Byzantine Studies Conferences attendees to join him for a very informal discussion of Dumbarton Oaks Papers in particular and journal submission in general. He’ll be offering suggestions for authors, discussing DOP’s current direction, and answering any questions. Anyone interested can join him in front of the Dumbarton Oaks book display after sessions conclude on Friday, November 4, at 6:15pm.

Dumbarton Oaks Public Lecture: Dynastic Jewels: A Late Antique Rhetoric of Treasure and Adornment November 10, 2022 at 6 pm

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Public Lecture in Byzantine Studies Dynastic Jewels: A Late Antique Rhetoric of Treasure and Adornment November 10, 2022 at 6 pm ET, by Cecily J. Hilsdale 

This event is located in the Oak Room of our Fellowship House at 1700 Wisconsin Ave NW Washington, DC.

Late Antique poetry has often been characterized by its ‘jeweled style,’ in which authors mobilized ornament, variety, and tessellation for the purposes of visual splendor and immediacy. Jewels, and treasure more broadly, also serve as particularly effective metonyms for power. And historians frequently describe the programmatic effort to bolster dynastic power over the course of the fourth century as a ‘dynastic imperative.’ Turning from poetry to material culture, this paper considers select extant jewels in conversation with these two key scholarly debates. Read in dialogue with the aesthetics of the jeweled style of contemporary poetry as well as the ideology of the dynastic imperative, the paper focuses on exquisite jewels associated with women of the western court at the turn of the fifth century. These treasures worn by women, it is argued, were an integral part of the sustained program of dynasty building in the tumultuous years following the death of Emperor Theodosius I. This talk is part of a larger research project on late antique and early medieval treasure as the index of both power and loss. Studying treasure in this way provides the opportunity to reassess our relationship to the past—that is, our sense of historicity—as we try to make sense of those versions of the past that are championed and others that are elided.

 

Cecily J. Hilsdale (PhD, University of Chicago) is Associate Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at McGill University in Montreal and author of Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline (Cambridge University Press, 2014). She specializes in the arts of Byzantium and the Mediterranean, including Byzantine luxury items as diplomatic gifts and the dissemination of styles, techniques, iconographies, and ideologies of imperium. Her research has appeared in the journals Art Bulletin, Art History, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Gesta, and the Medieval Globe, among others.

 

 Register here: https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/scholarly-activities/dynastic-jewels-a-late-antique-rhetoric-of-treasure-and-adornment

CFP: Ninth North American Syriac Symposium — Yale, June 11-14, 2023

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Call for Papers: The Ninth North American Syriac Symposium
“Syriac at the Center”

June 11-14, 2023
Yale University

New Haven, Connecticut

Held every four years since 1991, the North American Syriac Symposium brings together scholars and students for exchange and discussion on a wide variety of topics related to the language, literature, and cultural history of Syriac Christianity, extending chronologically from the first centuries CE to the present day and geographically from Syriac Christianity’s homeland in the Middle East to South India, China, and the worldwide diaspora.

In 2023, the Ninth North American Syriac Symposium will be held in person at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, June 11 to June 14. Most of the event will be hosted at the Yale Divinity School, with the opportunity to visit the Dura-Europos exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery and to see an exhibition of Syriac manuscripts from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The theme of this Symposium is “Syriac at the Center.” Syriac has often been treated as an auxiliary language in the modern humanities, an adjunct tool to scholarship on Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, early Islam, the histories of theology and of science, and other areas of inquiry. It is an “extra language” in humanistic curricula. This conference welcomes papers on topics that treat Syriac as central, not peripheral, to scholarly investigation. How do our research subjects look when we stand with Syriac and regard other traditions and areas as peripheral?

Positions of center and periphery are matters of perspective, easily leading to one-sided views. We therefore encourage papers on this theme that rise above mere encomia to the importance of the Syriac traditions, but go further, showing how centering Syriac reveals new solutions to old problems, as well as new problems and areas of inquiry, and complicates current scholarly assumptions.

We welcome particularly papers addressing

  • Syriac and translation activity
  • Syriac manuscripts, documents, and epigraphy
  • Syriac geographical thought
  • Social and economic history using Syriac sources
  • Bodily and ritual practices
  • Christological considerations
  • Development of canon law
  • Relations with the religious “other” from the Syriac Christian perspective
  • Philoxenus of Mabbug on the sesquimillennial anniversary of his death

Any investigation into the Syriac traditions has the potential to contribute to the main theme of the symposium. We therefore also welcome generally presentations by scholars on their current research, even if they do not directly address the symposium’s theme.

Please submit a title and abstract of proposed communication (150–200 words), to https://nass23.yale.edu by January 2, 2023. Accepted speakers will be notified in February 2023.

For inquiries concerning the symposium, please do not hesitate to reach out to nass23yale@gmail.com.

The organizers, 

Jimmy Daccache, Maria Doerfler, Kevin van Bladel

NB: This symposium coincides with the 6th Yale Liturgy Conference, June 12-15, 2023, held at the Maurice R. Greenberg Conference Center, about five minutes’ walk from the Yale Divinity School. We expect to host a joint panel between both events and welcome proposals for contributions.

Byzantine Communities Reading Group

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Byzantine Communities Reading Group
Convenors: Arie Neuhauser and Tom Alexander

In recent years, graduate students and early career researchers are paying increasing attention to communities in the Byzantine world, beyond the Constantinopolitan elite that produced most of our sources and state-centred narratives. In doing so, these scholars have been able to produce innovative conclusions and engage with debates that touch on the very fundamentals of Byzantine society and culture.

This reading group seeks to bring together early career scholars at pre-doctoral and doctoral level who are interested in studying Byzantine communities, broadly defined both chronologically and geographically. By the nature of this topic, those who research communities in a particular context may not be aware of work produced on communities in a different time and place. A scholar working on Middle Byzantine Greece, for example, might not be aware of (but would benefit from) discussions of how to approach early Byzantine agricultural communities in Egypt, or Late Byzantine civic organisation. By bringing together interested scholars, we hope to be able to share insights and explore issues that we encounter in our respective studies, such as local power structures, the relationship of communities to the state, identities outside Constantinople, and more, with the aim of discussing broader research methodologies for the study of Byzantine communities.

As we know from first-hand experience how busy graduate students and young researchers can typically be, we don’t wish to over-burden participants. We envision this group as meeting once every two weeks, for between an hour and an hour and a half, with every meeting led by a different participant who will circulate beforehand a short primary source, with an English translation, alongside one or two optional secondary readings. To register your interest, please send a message to: byzcommunities@gmail.com. Once we are able to gauge interest, we will circulate a form to ascertain the best time for our first meeting.

WILLIAM SANDERS SCARBOROUGH FELLOWSHIPS, Deadline January 15, 2023

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WILLIAM SANDERS SCARBOROUGH FELLOWSHIPS

Deadline: January 15, 2023
This fellowship is intended to honor and remember Professor William Sanders Scarborough and to help foster diversity in the fields of Classical and Hellenic Studies and the Humanities more broadly by supporting students and teachers from underrepresented groups in their study and research at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

William Sanders Scarborough (1852–1926), the son of an enslaved woman and a freedman, was a pathbreaking African American Classical scholar and public intellectual. Scarborough’s scholarship included philological works on Greek and Roman authors, as well as studies of African languages and African American folklore. His First Lessons in Greek (1881) was the first foreign language textbook by an African American author. He taught at Ohio’s Wilberforce University and Payne Theological Seminary, serving as Wilberforce’s president from 1908–1920. At least twice in his life (1886 and 1896), Scarborough hoped to attend the American School, with the encouragement of the School’s Managing Committee. Lack of funding, coupled with his many professional responsibilities, kept Scarborough from realizing his dream of going to Greece.

Eligibility:  Graduate students, faculty members (K-12 and all levels of post-secondary education), and independent scholars residing in the United States or Canada, regardless of citizenship, whose geographic origin, diverse experiences, and socio-economic background are underrepresented at the School (including persons from the Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color communities), and whose studies, research, or teaching would benefit from residency at the School. Fellowship recipients need not be specialists in the field of Classical Studies. The School welcomes applicants from faculty of K-12 schools and from students or faculty from public and private universities, colleges, and community colleges; and encourages applications from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Terms and Duration:  The fellowship supports up to three months in residence at the School to carry out proposed research projects, to join the School’s academic programs (field trips and seminars during the academic year, excavations at the Agora or Corinth, scientific field schools, etc.), and/or to develop knowledge, resources, and collegial networks to enhance their teaching. Applicants are encouraged to contact the Programs Administrator well in advance of submitting their proposal for advice on fitting the resources and opportunities of the School to their needs and interests. Fellowship winners will be paired with ASCSA mentors who can assist them in planning and preparing for their time in Greece. Field trips in Greece involve very high temperatures in the summer and early fall and walking over very uneven terrain; these factors should be taken into account when planning an application. Applicants intending to use the fellowship to participate in an ASCSA summer program must submit the Scarborough application AND a separate application to the relevant program(s) of interest. Applicants wishing to use the Scarborough fellowship to offset costs of participation in the Regular Member academic program of the School must also apply directly for Regular Membership (deadline Jan. 15, 2023); admission to the Regular Program requires that applicants write an examination in mid-February. The fellowship may not be held concurrently with Regular Member Fellowships.

Awards granted in the January 2023 competition should be used between June 1, 2023 and May 30, 2024.

Each award provides for $1500 per month (rounded upwards to the nearest whole month to a maximum of 3 month) as a stipend. The fellowship provides room and board at Loring Hall, a waiver of any applicable School fees (including summer program course fees), and one roundtrip economy-class airfare to Athens. Meals, Monday through Friday, are provided at Loring Hall for the fellow. The cost of participation on trips during the academic year is not covered (costs are billed in Athens after each trip). Meals or incidental expenses outside Loring Hall are not covered by the fellowship.

The School intends to make up to four awards each year.

Application: Submit an online application here. A complete application will include:

  • A 2-page, single-spaced, statement indicating your eligibility, describing the proposed use of the fellowship including any formal program at the School you plan to apply for, the proposed timeframe for your work at the School, and your project or research goals (as applicable).
  • A curriculum vitae.
  • A copy of current transcripts for student applicants (scans of official transcripts are acceptable).
  • Arrange for two letters of recommendation. Recommenders will be asked to upload their letters via the online application system, Submittable.  Upon submission of the online application, recommenders will be sent an automated email with instructions about how to submit their letters of recommendation. Or, applicants may choose to send the request at any time by clicking the “Send Request Now” button on the online application form.

For more information: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/fellowships-and-grants

Questions? Contact : Alicia Dissinger, Programs Administrator, programs@ascsa.org

Award decisions will be announced in March 2023.

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE – BYZANTINIST SOCIETY OF CYPRUS

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The Byzantinist Society of Cyprus (BSC/ΒΕΚ: Βυζαντινολογική Εταιρεία Κύπρου) invites papers to be presented at the Fourth International Conference on Byzantine and Medieval Studies, to be held in Nicosia, Cyprus, between the 17th and the 19th of March 2023.

Scholars, researchers, and students are encouraged to present their ongoing research, work-in-progress or fieldwork report on any aspect of the history, archaeology, art, architecture, literature, philosophy and religion of Cyprus and the broader Mediterranean region during the Byzantine, Medieval and Ottoman periods.

The languages of the conference will be Greek, English, French and German.

Deadline for abstracts: December 19, 2022.

Find attached the call for papers and the Conference poster.

Byzantine Studies Lectures of the Institute of Historical Research

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The Byzantine Studies Lectures of the Institute of Historical Research (National Hellenic Research Foundation) continue on October 25 with a hybrid lecture on:

“Books and Scribes in the Eastern Mediterranean. St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai and Its Metochion on Crete (13th-15th Centuries)”

by Eleftherios Despotakis, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.

18:00 EET, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 48, V. Constantinou Av. 11635, Athens.

To join via Zoom please follow the link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_M0J-HgFhTFyiSlG2-ySFxQ

Tübingen Byzantine and Near Eastern Seminar, Winter Term 2022/23

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Tübingen Byzantine and Near Eastern Seminar
Winter Term 2022/23
Thursdays, 6:15 p.m.
“Hegelbau”, Room 2, Wilhelmstraße 36, 72074 Tübingen
Convened by F. Montinaro & the Research Group “Religious Conflict and Mobility: Byzantium and the Greater Mediterranean, 700-900”

October 20, 2022
Milka LEVY-RUBIN (Jerusalem/Tübingen)
Inheriting the Land: Muslim Sanctification of the Holy Land in the Early Muslim Period

November 10
Sergey MINOV (Tübingen)
The Syriac Life of Rubil: Story of a Monastic Community on the Run

November 17
Sergey IVANOV (Munich)
Byzantine Influence over the Early Rus‘: A Reassessment

November 24
Staffan WAHLGREN (Trondheim)
How to Write History in the Tenth Century: On the Working Methods of Chroniclers and Historians in the Age of Constantine VII and His Followers

December 8
Mehmetcan AKPINAR (Tübingen)
The Qur’an and the Near Eastern Legal Traditions: The Case of False Accusations of Adultery

January 12, 2023
Béatrice CASEAU (Paris)
Church Incense and Perfumes (4th-13th C.)

January 19
Albrecht BERGER (Munich)
Von der Legitimierung einer Hauptstadt: Troja, Rom, Konstantinopel

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