Announcements

BYZANTINIST SOCIETY OF CYPRUS LECTURE SERIES

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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 first lecture which is scheduled for Thursday, 14 April at 19:00 will be offered by Professor Judith Herrin with the title “Should the period 400-800AD be called Early Christendom? The view from Ravenna”.

The lecture is free and open to the wider public through the following link:
BYZANTINIST SOCIETY OF CYPRUS – ONLINE LECTURE SERIES – APRIL 2022
Hosted by Byzantinist Society Cyprus

https://byzantinistsociety.my.webex.com/byzantinistsociety.my/j.php?MTID=m223dc35beeb340c28462ad5900fee08c
Thursday, Apr 14, 2022 7:00 pm | 2 hours | (UTC+03:00) Athens, Bucharest
Meeting number: 2553 817 1744
Password: aH9yGtSen49 (24994873 from phones and video systems)

Join by video system
Dial 25538171744@webex.com
You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number.

Join by phone
+1-650-479-3208 United States Toll

Access code: 255 381 71744

Also find attached the program of the lectures for Spring-Summer 2022.

BSC Board
https://byzantinistsociety.org.cy/

Tsiter-Kontopoulou Short-Term Research Stipends

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Tsiter-Kontopoulou Short-Term Research Stipends
at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna

The Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna, thanks to the generosity of the Tsiter-Kontopoulou Fund, invites applications for a Short-Term Research Stipend to enable pre- and post-doctoral scholars to pursue research on Byzantine and early modern Greek culture, with particular emphasis on cultural and intellectual history in the widest sense, including the history of Orthodox Christianity.

For more information about the Department, its Library, and the Tsiter-Kontopoulou Trust see: https://www.byzneo.univie.ac.at
https://bibliothek.univie.ac.at/fb-byzantinistik/
https://tsiter-kontopoulou-schenkung.univie.ac.at
Terms: The duration of the research stay is between two and four weeks (please indicate in your application the desired length of stay and the scientific motivation for this choice). During their stay, the recipients of the stipend are expected to give an informal lunch-time presentation of their current research.
Eligibility: This stipend is intended to support young and early career scholars, i.e. from the final year of doctoral study to no more than eight years after the completion of the Ph.D.
Amount: The stipend offers the reimbursement of travel expenses plus a daily allowance, for a maximum 4.000 Euros total for four weeks or a maximum 2.500 Euros for two weeks (to be reimbursed after the completion of the stay). You are expected to make your own arrangements.
Appointment period: any two or four weeks during the Semester between 1 October 2022 and 30 June 2023.
Application: Please send a description of the proposed research including a statement as to why you wish to conduct this research in Vienna (max. 300 words), a provisional budget and an indication of preferred dates, curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages), and list of publications, to Mrs. Petra Greger at the address below.
Doctoral students should also include a short letter of endorsement (max. 1 page) from their adviser. Submissions will be accepted by e-mail only.
Deadline: 30 May, 2022. The decision of the selection committee will be communicated no later than June 30, 2022.
Further Inquiries: Mrs. Petra Greger: petra.greger@univie.ac.at

 

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 48th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

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As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 48th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, November 3–6, 2022. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/48th-bsc). The deadline for submission is April 22, 2022.

If the proposed session is accepted, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 5 session participants (presenters and chair) up to $600 maximum for scholars based in North America and up to $1200 maximum for those coming from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement. For scholars participating remotely, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse participants for conference registration.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/48th-bsc.

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

Ukraine Lecture Series

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From Kyivan Rus’ to Modern Ukraine: Virtual Conversations on History, Art, and Cultural Heritage
 
Inaugural Lecture by Olenka Z. Pevny: “Lacunae of Art History and Kyiv’s Visual Culture”
 
Date: April 22, 2022, at 12:00pm ET via Zoom
 
Ukraine’s history, art, and culture are endangered by the ongoing war. This lecture and conversation series by experts in the fields of history, art history, archaeology, heritage, sociology, as well as museums and conservation, among others, presents the region’s rich historical and cultural complexity through its objects, sites, and monuments. A focus on the medieval and early modern periods featuring Greek, Latin, and Slavic contacts, brings to the fore critical evidence to counter modern misrepresentations of Ukraine’s history and cultural heritage. This series of events is co-organized by Dumbarton Oaks in collaboration with North of Byzantium and Connected Central European Worlds, 1500–1700.
 
**Free and open to the public. Register for the inaugural lecture here: https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/scholarly-activities/kyivan-rus-to-modern-ukraine-home/kyiv-visual-culture. If you cannot attend but would like to receive future updates about this series of events, please join our mailing list here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTu428mafg75sSXom3Hkxsy9vHePx2CbMX9WmkC92_w6OV6g/viewform.**

History of Science in the Medieval World Summer School (18-22 July 2022, Veliko Tarnovo): CfA and Poster

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HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD SUMMER SCHOOL

ЛЯТНА ШКОЛА ПО ИСТОРИЯ НА НАУКАТА В СРЕДНОВЕКОВНИЯ СВЯТ

organized by University of Veliko Tarnovo “Sts. Cyril and Methodius” with Academic Theatre Ikaros, in cooperation with the International Summer Seminar in Bulgarian Language and Culture

Pilot edition: 18–22 July 2022, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Format: The morning lecture sessions will be conducted in a hybrid way, whereas the afternoon workshops, Covid-permitting, will be in person.

Web: https://www.uni-vt.bg/eng/pages/?page=5928&zid=144

Organizers

Dr Divna Manolova (Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science); Associate Professor Nikolay Kanev (Department of History, University of Veliko Tarnovo “Sts. Cyril and Methodius”); Professor Dr Dimitar Dimitrov (Department of History, University of Veliko Tarnovo “Sts. Cyril and Methodius”); Associate Professor Angel Nikolov (Department of History, Sofia University “St. Kliment of Ohrid”).

Summer School Philosophy and Vision

The School studies the wider medieval world of Afro-Eurasia and aims to shed light on Byzantium and the Slavonic world, and their intellectual heritage as agents in the development of medieval science, which, though significant, nevertheless remain largely unknown to the scholarly community. Even though current scholarship is focused on the so-called ‘Global Medieval’, the medieval Slavonic, Byzantine and Black Sea regions remain a blind spot for both the researchers and the general public outside of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Thus, the School aims at positioning Byzantium and the Slavonic world on the map of history of medieval science, thus offering the participants the rare opportunity to get acquainted with their respective heritage.

In its pilot edition, the Summer School will problematize the medieval manuscript and approach it as a space and as a territory. Building upon this conceptual premise, the School will also introduce students to the medieval epistemic fields (sciences) which study the natural world (the kosmos) as a space, namely geography, cosmography and astronomy. Students will acquire fundamental knowledge concerning the place and role of the sciences in the intellectual world of the Middle Ages. They will also develop an understanding of premodern science as a spectrum of disciplines wider than the late antique framework of the four mathematical sciences (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) and inclusive of all epistemic domains dedicated to the intellectual exploration of the natural world (the kosmos) and of humanity. The School relies on a discussion-based and experiential / experimental format. That is, the School includes workshops, which will guide the students into the use of medieval instruments and maps as preserved in the surviving manuscripts.

The common discussion language of the School will be English.
If the participants know a medieval scholarly language (for this pilot edition: Latin, Greek and/or Old Church Slavonic, but in the future also Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Classical Armenian, and so forth), this would be an advantage, but it is not an essential requirement for participation.
During the selection process, preference will be given to MA and PhD students, but researchers with interest in the Middle Ages and / or History of Science can also apply.
Available places: The School offers twelve places for in-person participants wishing to attend both the morning (lectures) and afternoon (workshops) sessions.
There is no limit for the number of online participants, but their registration is restricted solely to the morning sessions.
We cannot offer any financial support to cover travel and accommodation expenses.
There is no registration fee.
In order to apply, please send a short bio and description of what motivates your application (maximum one page altogether). Please indicate in your application whether you would like to attend the Summer School in person or online.

Please address your informal inquiries and your application materials to Dr Divna Manolova at dvmanolova@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.

Application Deadline: 29 April 2022.

2 Post-doc positions: “Commentary on John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History”

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Within the project “Commentary on John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History” (directed by Prof. Dr. Hartmut Leppin) financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Historisches Seminar, department Alte Geschichte, we invite applications for 2 post-graduate positions as

Post-doctoral Researchers (m/f/d)
(E13 TV-G-U)

The full-time positions are to be filled from 1st October 2022 onwards, limited to 36 months. An application for an extension of the project beyond the 36 months is planned. The salary is based on the job characteristics of the collective bargaining agreement applicable to Goethe University (TV-G-U).

The project will integrate historical and theological research on the Ecclesiastical History in a new critical edition, translation, and comprehensive commentary on the third part of this work. Open access digital and print versions of the edition, translation, and commentary are planned and preliminary digital publications in several repositories will invite feedback from the scholarly community during the course of the project. Collaboration with several digital humanities projects will also result in a suite of didactic aids to support students and scholars learning Syriac. For further information, please contact h.leppin@em.uni-frankfurt.de.

We are looking for candidates with a scientific university degree and an excellent doctorate in Ancient Christianity, Ancient History, Classical Philology, History of Religion, Semitic Philology, Ancient Judaism, or related fields, very good knowledge of English as well as sufficient knowledge of Latin, ancient Greek and Syriac.

Please submit your complete application as PDF file with a statement of interest, a curriculum vitae, copies of your final university degrees, a copy of your doctoral thesis and up to three further publications, and statements on your knowledge of ancient languages no later than 30th April 2022 in electronic form to h.leppin@em.uni-frankfurt.de.

Any costs in connection with a job interview can unfortunately not be covered.

Petition to save the Art History MA program at the National University of Arts, Bucharest

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Dear colleagues (with apologies for cross-posting),

Please consider reading and signing this petition to help save the Art History MA program “Visual and Curatorial Studies” at the National University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania.

On March 23, 2022, the Senate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest voted to discontinue the MA program “Visual and Curatorial Studies,” the only program with this profile within the University, and the only MA program of the Department of History and Theory of Art. This program is the oldest art history MA program in Romania, with graduates numbering many distinguished figures that act today as important members of the cultural and scholarly communities.

Art history is already a small and relatively “young” field of study in Romania, so removing this program is an awful decision, especially in this moment in time. I am helping my colleagues in Bucharest bring international attention to this issue in the hopes of having the decision revoked. We have set up a petition with more details here: https://chng.it/vsq47qRBxx

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Best wishes,
Alice

—
Alice Isabella Sullivan, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
Neubauer Faculty Fellow, 2021-2022
Tufts University | 11 Talbot Ave | Medford, MA 02155

Rethinking the Wearable in the Middle Ages

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Symposium—Rethinking the Wearable in the Middle Ages

April 28–29, 2022
Zoom / 38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall, Bard Graduate Center

Covering, protecting, and adorning the body count among the most fundamental of human concerns, at once conveying aspects of an individual’s persona while also situating a person within a given social context. Wearable adornment encompasses materials fashioned by human hands (like fabric, metalwork, or even animal bones) and modifications to the body itself (such as tattoos, cosmetics, or hairstyles), which beautify the body while simultaneously conveying social, political, and protective functions and meanings. The wearable is thus the most representational and at the same time most intimate product of material culture.

This conference seeks to expand our current understanding of the wearable in the Middle Ages. Current scholarship on the topic in Byzantine, western medieval, Eurasian art, as well as Islamic traditions tends to encompass clothing and jewelry, and is frequently medium-specific, with minimal regard to the interrelatedness of different aspects of appearance. On the one hand, work on medieval textiles has tended to approach questions of identity, consumption, and appearance by comparing textual sources and visual depictions with surviving textiles. The study of medieval jewelry, on the other hand, largely focuses on the classification and attribution of precious metal pieces from excavations and museum collections, as scholars make sense of pieces long removed from the bodies they once adorned. Tattoos, prosthetics, cosmetics and headgear are almost entirely absent in our understandings of medieval dress practices. This separation was not always so, however, and indeed nineteenth-century art historians such as Gottfried Semper integrated all aspects of bodily adornment in their considerations of the nature of ornamentation and surface decoration.

Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan Library: A Celebration

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A New Exhibit: Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan Library: A Celebration
Splendors of the religious and artistic endeavors of Byzantine manuscript makers are on display from the Greek manuscript collection at the University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Research Center). We warmly invite you to explore these extraordinary treasures at the Audubon Room, North Hatcher Library, March 26-June 28, 2022.

The University of Michigan Library holds an extensive collection of Greek manuscripts consisting of 110 codices (bound manuscripts) and fragments that range from the fourth to the nineteenth centuries CE. It is the largest such collection in the Western Hemisphere. As explained in the exhibit, most of these manuscripts were purchased through the efforts of Professor Francis Willey Kelsey in the second decade of the previous century.

Our exhibit displays highlights from these holdings, offering insights into the religious and artistic endeavors involved in the making, use, and dissemination of Byzantine codices. In brief, these unique manuscripts are eloquent witnesses of a period of achievements in the areas of textual transmission, calligraphy, illumination, and bookbinding. Most of the Greek manuscripts in our collection were used for various religious services in churches and monasteries. Others were probably destined for private devotion, such as the pocket-size, richly illuminated manuscripts carrying the Gospels. While many of our manuscripts indeed contain the text of the New Testament in various forms, others include religious works from the fourth century onward, written by venerated scholars who gradually shaped the theological foundations of the Christian faith throughout the centuries.

Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Vol. 1., by Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021)

Tradition and Individuality: Bindings from the University of Michigan Greek Manuscript Collection by Julia Miller (Ann Arbor: The Legacy Press, 2021) http://www.thelegacypress.com/tradition-individuality.html

When: March 26-June 28, 2022.

Where: Audubon Room, Hatcher Library North

CALL FOR PAPERS – The Forty-Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

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CALL FOR PAPERS
The Forty-Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

DEADLINE: April 30, 2022

The Forty-Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference (BSC) will be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, from Thursday, November 3, through Sunday, November 6, 2022. The conference will be hosted by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies with the collaboration of the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and assistance from the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. The Local Arrangements Co-Chairs are Sharon E. J. Gerstel (Department of Art History) and Zrinka Stahuljak (Department of Comparative Literature).

The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines related to Byzantine Studies, broadly construed. This year the BSC especially encourages papers that examine transcultural connections or situate Byzantium/Byzantine developments within larger historical, regional, and/or global contexts. With the goal of engaging a wider audience, we also encourage panels that forge a dialogue between Byzantine Studies and cognate fields.

Paper proposals for the 2022 BSC may be submitted in the form of individual papers or as part of organized panels, via EasyChair. For more details and instructions, please visit the BSANA website: https://bsana.net/annual-conference/.

Dr. Galina Tirnanic, BSC 2022 Program Committee Chair

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