Lecture: “The Byzantine Tradition at the Barnes Foundation,” April 9

Upcoming Lecture: “The Byzantine Tradition at the Barnes Foundation”
Saturday April 9, 11:30a-12:30p (Eastern)
Onsite or online tickets available here: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/talks-and-tours/lecture-byzantine-tradition

Join Amy Gillette, research associate, and Kaelin Jewell, senior instructor, as they share new research on the Byzantine tradition at the Barnes Foundation. While the collection is best known as a shrine of modern masterpieces, Dr. Albert Barnes designed the galleries as an active educational space to connect past and present experiences of art. He recognized the influence of Byzantine art on 20th-century artists, even declaring that “modern painting developed out of mosaics.”

In this talk, Gillette and Jewell will discuss Dr. Barnes’s involvement in formulating the Byzantine tradition of modern art, focusing on his writings and wall ensembles as well as case studies of individual artists. They also consider how the Barnes ensembles shape our experiences and interpretations of the Byzantine tradition in the present day.

Statement on the Past and Present of Ukraine and its Cultural Heritage – from the ICMA and BSANA

As scholarly organizations devoted to the study and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages, the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) deplore the Russian attacks on Ukraine and the continuing threat to human life, artistic treasures, and cultural heritage. We object strongly to the statements of the President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin, published in his July 2021 essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” While the title ostensibly conveys fraternity, the real aim of Putin’s essay was to delegitimize Ukraine as a country. This has been part of Russia’s ongoing attempts to falsify Ukrainian history and reclaim its sites and monuments. Putin has made a tendentious case that Moscow is the legitimate heir to the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus’, “continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood,” whereas the Ukrainian nation is the product of various “distorting” influences emerging from the West. Putin’s speech of February 21, 2022 further declared that Ukraine had no legitimacy as a nation-state, and laid claim to its cultural heritage as “an inalienable part of our [the Russian Federation’s] own history, culture and spiritual space.” While the history of Ukraine is integral to Russia’s territorial, spiritual, and ideological identity, Ukraine’s identity is not reducible to being a precursor to Russia. Ukraine’s unique history, art, and culture should be acknowledged, respected, and protected in these troubling times.

All too often, our own fields have been complicit in failing to examine inherited narratives that subsume the Ukrainian people, their history, and monuments under the rubric of “Russia,” thus helping to facilitate the historical distortions made more explicitly by President Putin. While acknowledging the irreducible complexity of the intertwined histories of Russia and Ukraine, we also recognize the right of Ukraine to the cultural patrimony of its own territory. The monuments of Kyivan Rus’ in Kyiv, Chernihiv, and elsewhere, are treasures of the Eastern Christian tradition and of the world’s cultural heritage. They are rightly safeguarded and administered by the legitimately elected government of Ukraine and by its cultural ministries and private institutions. Moreover, as historians, we underscore the very diversity of the region that Putin’s essay belittled. Like most medieval locales, Ukraine was home to peoples of different ethnic groups and religious faiths. Jewish, Islamic, and Armenian communities, among others, were integral to cultural life in the area in the Middle Ages, and their art and architecture endures within Ukraine’s borders. We also affirm the continued diversity of its modern nation-state, as well as the LBGTQIA+ communities in the country, who face great dangers under the Russian invasion. We stand with our colleagues whose nuanced work on Ukraine’s history poses the greatest challenges to Putin’s monolithic and mythical view of history.

We earnestly call for the withdrawal of Russian forces from the territory of Ukraine, for the protection of all people in the region, and for the restitution of cultural patrimony to its legitimate custodians.

  • The Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Associates, and Advocacy Committee of the International Center of Medieval Art
  • The Governing Board of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America

Walter Emil Kaegi Jr. (1937–2022)

BSANA mourns the death of one of its founding members, Walter Kaegi (https://bsana.net/history/). The following obituary, submitted by Todd Hickey of the University of California, Berkeley, will appear in the Chicago Tribune.
Walter Emil Kaegi Jr., a pathbreaking historian at the University of Chicago and Oriental Institute noted for his scholarship on the Byzantine and Roman Empires, as well as early Islam, has died.

Kaegi joined the University’s history faculty in 1965 after receiving his BA from Haverford College and PhD from Harvard University. He taught at Chicago for 52 years, retiring in 2017. His work was known for integrating a wide range of sources, and for crossing cultural and scholarly specializations. He gathered insights from military, religious, visual arts, numismatic, and other cultural perspectives. He drew from sources in many languages, as he spoke Arabic, Armenian, French, German, Greek, and Latin, and had reading knowledge of several Slavic languages.

His books included Byzantium and the Decline of Rome (1968); Byzantine Military Unrest (1981); Army, Society, and Religion in Byzantium (1982); Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (1992); Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (2003); and Muslim Expansion and Byzantine Collapse in North Africa (2010). He was co-author or editor of 22 other books, and wrote over 100 articles spanning a wide range of topics. He co-founded the Byzantine Studies Conference, edited the journal Byzantinische Forschungen, was president of the US National Committee for Byzantine Studies, and was a voting member of the Oriental Institute. He taught and mentored three generations of historians.

In 2017 his students and fellow scholars collaborated on a book celebrating Kaegi’s work, entitled Radical Traditionalism: The Influence of Walter Kaegi in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval Studies.

Kaegi’s early career focused on the Byzantine and Roman Empires, and how they coped with the challenges of decline. After learning Arabic in his early 40s, Kaegi gained new insights from Arabic language sources. This led him in a new scholarly direction, as he focused the latter part of his career on the expansion of early Islam, especially into North Africa at the expense of the Byzantine Empire.

Kaegi traveled widely. He was proud of having visited all of the Roman Empire’s more than 100 provinces, checking off the final destination—Benghazi province in Libya—during a very brief interval of peace in 2013. He lived for extended periods in every Middle Eastern country west of the Persian Gulf states, with lengthy scholarly stays in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. He and his family lived in Paris, France, in 1978–79. Late in his career he developed an interest in China, living for a period in Taiwan, teaching at the Fu Jen Catholic University about the decline of empires.

He was born in New Albany, Indiana, spending most of his childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. He was drawn to history at an early age, inventing historical games with his grade school friend Hunter S. Thompson, who later became a noted journalist. The two worked as boys on their self-published newspaper, The Southern Star, and shared a lively correspondence about military history into adulthood. By elementary school, Kaegi knew that he wanted to be a historian; by the end of high school he had decided he wanted to focus on the Byzantine Empire. He was proud to be commissioned a Kentucky Colonel by Governor Andy Beshear in 2021.

At home, Kaegi was a lifelong collector of coins, stamps, and books. He was an avid gardener, frequently seen tending his front yard by passers-by on Greenwood Avenue in Hyde Park. Generations of pets were particularly drawn to him, usually while he consumed a heavy diet of newspapers and TV news shows. He and his wife Louise both loved American folk music, and he enjoyed attending performances by Louise’s band (The Windy City Jammers). He was the Kaegi family’s genealogist and archivist, sustaining connections with relatives in his family’s home countries of Switzerland and Germany. Raised a Presbyterian, he converted to the Catholic Church later in life, in 2004.

Kaegi’s wife, Louise, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia and they met through their shared interest in the Middle East. They lived for two years during sabbaticals in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Louise passed away in 2018.

Kaegi is predeceased by his brothers Richard and George, and survived by his sons, Fritz (Rebecca) and Chris; his three grandchildren; and his sister Karen Kaegi Dean (Tom), of Indianapolis.

A memorial will be held on March 26 at 10am at St Thomas the Apostle Church, 5472 South Kimbark, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Questions and arrangements can be made through Cage Memorial in South Shore. He will be laid to rest in a private ceremony at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

Byzantine Dialogues from the Gennadius Library, March 8: Lecture by John Penniman “The Residue of Eden”

The Byzantine Dialogues from the Gennadius Library present

“The Residue of Eden: Myth and Medicine in Early Christian Anointing Practices”

Professor John Penniman, Bucknell University & NEH Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

7 p.m. EET (Greece) / 12 p.m. EST (U.S.)

ICotsen Hall and online

Olive oil was one of the most popular pharmacological substances in the ancient Mediterranean world. It appears pervasively in medical handbooks, magical incantations, cultic healing rituals, hygiene guidelines, and accessories for personal adornment. As a drug (pharmakon) with wide application, olive oil provides an interesting case study for exploring the borderlands between religious ritual and medical regimen. In “The Residue of Eden,” Professor John Penniman of Bucknell University will offer a re-interpretation of the literary and material evidence surrounding early Christian anointing practices in light of the pharmacological power of olive oil.

Guests attending Cotsen Hall are required to wear a mask and present valid COVID-19 vaccination certificates or certificates of recovery (valid for 180 days) along with ID. For those joining us online, please register at the link below. Registration will allow you to submit questions during the Zoom Q&A session.

For more information & registration: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/events/details/byzantine-dialogues-from-the-gennadius-library-the-residue-of-eden-myth-and-medicine-in-early-christian-anointing-practices

Documenter les défis de l’Église miaphysite tardo-antique

Documenter les défis de l’Église miaphysite tardo-antique
March 17-18, 2022
Château d’Angers

Entre 536 et 588 (date probable de la mort de Jean d’Éphèse), un événement historique frappant et inattendu se produit à l’échelle de l’Empire romain chrétien d’Orient : la restructuration d’une importante Église institutionnelle (principalement en Syrie, en Mésopotamie et en Egypte) et à ses frontières (voire même au-delà). Basée sur une affirmation miaphysite (une seule nature incarnée de Dieu le Verbe), cette communauté doit alors justifier son existence (sur les plans théologique, canonique et historique). Privé de soutien officiel et parfois même persécutée, elle entend néanmoins perpétuer son action et développer sa dynamique. Intense, ce processus offre donc la rare opportunité d’observer la reconfiguration d’une Église qui cherche à cultiver un lien fort avec son passé et ses héritages. Ainsi donc un important effort est-il alors consenti pour doter les assemblées miaphysites d’une armature hiérarchique, doctrinale et canonique, au moment où elles sont confrontées à des défis vitaux. Aussi notre réunion aura-t-elle vocation à considérer la formation de ce corpus de références, sa variété ainsi que ses caractéristiques et le devenir de son exploitation jusqu’aux débuts de la domination arabo-musulmane.

2 postdoctoral researchers in Byzantine Studies & Digital Humanities

Dear colleagues,

In the framework of the project “DigiByzSeal – Unlocking the value of seals: New Methodologies for Historical Research in Byzantine Studies” (more on the project here https://ifa.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/forschung/byzantinistik-und-neugriechische-philologie-forschung/drittmittel-projekte/digibyzseal) jointly funded by the ANR and the DFG, we are looking for:

 

2 postdoctoral researchers in Byzantine Studies and Digital Humanities

to start on April 1st 2022 for 24 months.

This call for application is intended for early career researchers, with less than 4 years of experience, but priority will be given to applicants having finished their PhD no longer than 2 years prior to the beginning of the contract.

You will work within the CNRS – UMR 8167, Orient et Méditerranée, équipe Monde Byzantin, based in Paris (5th arrondissement), in the premises of the Collège de France, where the work will be carried out under the supervision of Alessio Sopracasa, scientific responsible of the project.

Knowledge in Byzantine history, sigillography, epigraphy and/or numismatics as well as XML (particularly TEI and EpiDoc) and XSLT are preferable, but not mandatory.

Please note that in order to submit your application you will have to sign up on the job portal of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), where the 2 calls (one per vacancy) are available, with further information and requirements:

https://bit.ly/3s7hxuj

https://bit.ly/3s7tdgB

NB: there are two calls, one for each vacancy. They are identical (same profile, same planned activities, same salary etc.), and you can submit your application to either call. After clicking on the “Apply” button you will be able to create your account and submit your application.

The applications will have to be submitted only through the CNRS portal by March 15th.

 

All the very best,

Alessio Sopracasa (on behalf of the DigiByzSeal project).

Assistant Professor of Christian Near Eastern Languages, Catholic University of America

School of Arts and Sciences · Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures
Assistant Professor of Christian Near Eastern Languages

The Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America seeks to fill a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Christian Near Eastern Languages, to begin in Fall 2022.
The Department has a particular interest in candidates with strong skills in Classical Arabic and who also work extensively in Christian Arabic. Ideally, the candidate will also be able to teach at least one other Christian Near Eastern language, such as Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, and/or Syriac, and thereby complement the existing strengths of the faculty. See the department website <https://semitics.catholic.edu/> for information on courses regularly taught. Candidates should possess a strong commitment to scholarly research, teaching, and engaging with graduate students in research.
We seek candidates who understand, are enthusiastic about, and will make a significant contribution to the mission of the University <https://www.catholic.edu/about-us/at-a-glance/index.html>, which reads as follows: “As the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the Holy See, The Catholic University of America is committed to being a comprehensive Catholic and American institution of higher learning, faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ as handed on by the Church. Dedicated to advancing the dialogue between faith and reason, The Catholic University of America seeks to discover and impart the truth through excellence in teaching and research, all in service to the Church, the nation and the world.”
Applications should include the following:
● A curriculum vitae
● A letter of interest
● 1–3 sample publications
● teaching portfolio
● A list of at least three references
● A one- to two-page personal statement indicating how your research, teaching, and service will make a distinctive contribution to our University’s mission and to the vision of Catholic education outlined in the Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities Ex Corde Ecclesiae <https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae.html>.
Application materials should be sent via email to Dr. Andrew Gross (grossa@cua.edu) and be received by March 7, 2022.
Please direct any questions regarding this job announcement to Dr. Gross.
The Catholic University of America is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Full Professorship of Byzantine Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich

The Faculty for the Study of Culture invites applications for a Full Professorship (W3) of Byzantine Studies (Chair) commencing on April 1st, 2024.

The applicant should cover the field of Byzantine Studies in its entire breadth, that is, Byzantine Greek language, literature, history and cultural history from Late Antiquity to c. 1500.

We invite internationally highly visible scholars in the field to apply for this position. The successful candidate is expected to participate in the research activities of the Department for the Study of Culture and Archaeology, and to engage actively in the Department’s initiatives in research and teaching.

Prerequisites for this position are a university degree, a doctoral degree or a comparable specific qualification, teaching skills at university level, excellent academic achievements and a productive and promising research program.

CFP – Seeing, Not Seeing, and Being Seen: Vision as construction and as experience in the Byzantine World

The Association des étudiants du monde byzantin (AEMB) is happy to announce the 13th edition of the AEMB international post-graduate conference. For this edition, the selected theme, chosen with consultation with members of the association, is Visuality: “Seeing, Not Seeing, and Being Seen: Vision as construction and as experience in the Byzantine World”.
Presentation proposals of 250 to 300 words as well as a brief biography including the author’s institution, their level of study (masters, doctoral, post-doctoral), and their research subjects should be sent to aemb.paris@gmail.com by April 6 at the latest. The 20-minute talks may be presented in English or French. It is our hope that the Rencontres will take place physically in Paris. Participants’ travel costs may be covered by AEMB if they are unable to receive funding from their institutions. Selected candidates will be asked to adhere to the association.

You will find the complete Call For Papers attached to this email as well as a link to our website where you can find more information. We welcome you to share this announcement with any students that may be interested.

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