REMINDER: 10 fully funded PhD fellowships (MSCA Doctoral Network – AntCom)

 

10 funded PhDs opportunities within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities” (AntCom).

Are you interested in cultural heritage, reception studies and/or the new frontiers of manuscript studies? Are you passionate about cutting-edge research but you also want to boost your skills by learning about new approaches and technologies? We might have something for you.

We are a network of four universities (University of Southern Denmark, University of Verona, University of Salento, University of Santiago de Compostela), funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Action, Grant Agreement 101073543. We have created an innovative training program called “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities”, where we will investigate various aspects of the reception of Graeco-Roman cultural heritage (manuscript, linguistic and narrative) in Europe.

We advertise:

*   10 PhD positions

PhD candidates are expected to be recruited either from 01/09/2023 to 31/08/2026 or from 01/10/2023 to 30/09/2026, depending on the enrolling institution, under a 36- month research contract and will be enrolled in the PhD program starting from the 2023-2024 academic year. Depending on the chosen fellowship (details in the call), PhDs will be based at one of the consortium’s universities. Mutual secondments are part of the program.

We offer a generous living and research allowance (gross amounts):

*   Living: 3,400 €/month corrected by a country-specific coefficient established by the European Commission

*   Mobility allowance: 600 €/month

*   Family allowance (optional): 660 €/month.

Deadline for the application is the 24th of April – 12 p.m. (CET)

Interested applicants will find information on the training program, on each fellowship as well as details on specific requirements and the application process on the consortium’s website: https://antcom.eu/call-for-applications/. For further questions you are welcome to contact the project’s PI Aglae Pizzone (pizzone@sdu.dk).

Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar – Trinity 2023

 

The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar is designed to showcase the breadth of graduate research in modern Late Antique and Byzantine Studies and to foster academic collaboration across institutions and sub-disciplines.

The seminar takes place weekly on Mondays at 12.30-14.00 (BST), via Zoom. The speaker will present for 40-45 minutes, followed by audience questions and discussion. To register to attend, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. All are very welcome.
___________________________________
This term’s papers will be:

Monday 24th April

Prolet Decheva (University College Dublin), Late Antique Personifications of Abstract Ideas and Elite Identity 

Monday 1st May

Paul Ulishney (University of Oxford), The Crisis of the Chalcedonian Episcopate in Egypt, c. 652-c. 710 

Monday 8th May

Valeria Annunziata (La Sapienza Università di Roma), Challenging Authorities: How and Why Byzantine Scholars Emended Classical and Authoritative Texts 

Monday 15th May

Benjamin Morris (Cardiff University), ‘Against All Men’: The Movement of Military Service in Byzantine and English Treaties, 900-1200 

Monday 22nd May

Emily Chesley (Princeton University), Collateral Damage: Eastern Women’s Experiences in the Roman-Persian Wars, 4th-6th c. 

Monday 29th May

No paper 

Monday 5th June

Peter Boudreau (McGill University), Keeping Time in Byzantium: Temporal Imagery and Thought in the Calendars of Later Byzantium 

Monday 12th June

Jack Dooley (Royal Holloway, University of London), Between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’: the case of the gasmouloi in Late Byzantium 

Monday 19th June

Rachel Catherine Patt (Princeton University), From Pliny’s Potter to Proclus’ Vision: Tracing the Role of Pothos in Byzantine Visual Culture 

MJC-BSANA DH workshop: GIS

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and BSANA are pleased to offer a four-day geospatial workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Dr. Ryan Horne of the University of California, Los Angeles and Dr. Becky Seifred of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Working with Maps: An Introduction to GIS, Spatial Data, and Geospatial Resources for Byzantinists, workshop by Ryan Horne (UCLA) and Becky Seifred (UMass Amherst), Zoom, May 15–18, 2023, 11:00 AM–4:00 PM EDT with a break from 1:00–2:00 PM

This online workshop will offer Byzantinists an introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and its potential applications in Byzantine studies. Participants will learn how to work with geospatial data, how to organize it, where to find it, and how to create their own. Working in QGIS, a free and open-source GIS desktop software package, students will learn how to visualize geographic information and create their own maps. Sessions will cover the basics of GIS and using QGIS: data and file types, installing QGIS and adding plugins, coordinate reference systems, displaying and working with vector and raster data, performing vector-based spatial queries, using the QGIS Layout Editor to create a static map, and georeferencing an analog map to be used in analyses or as a basemap. This material will be complemented by sessions touching on cartography and geography—critical approaches to cartography, principles of effective map design, the intersection of geography and historical studies—linked open data, digital gazetteers, publishing maps for print and web applications, mapping resources, and data sharing repositories for making data accessible, as well as introductions to the web-based applications ArcGIS StoryMaps and Recogito.

This workshop is intended for those who have very little or no experience with GIS.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is 16 hours of instruction and an additional 30 minutes to an hour between sessions for practice exercises and preparation for following session. Participants are required to attend all sessions. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes Monday, May 1, 2023.

Who is eligible?

  • Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after May 2015) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Graduate students and early career researchers outside of North America will be placed on a waiting list and contacted if space is available.
  • All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form (https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/working-with-maps.

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

Bryn Mawr College Graduate Group Symposium

Call for Papers:

Timecraft: From Interpreting the Past to Shaping the Future 

The Fourteenth Biennial Symposium organized by Graduate Students in Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College 

November 10th-11th, 2023

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: Friday May 5th, 2023, 5:00 PM EST. biensymp@brynmawr.edu

Past, present, and future are not universal truths but ideas that emerge in relation to human existence. The social construction of time takes many forms. From the collection of relics and repatriation of antiquities to the creation of memorials and the removal of monuments, traces of the past help us to make sense of the current moment. Performances of epics collapse the past into the present and wish-fulfilling rituals tie the present to the future. Questions about time are accordingly wide ranging. For instance, how do researchers identify the cultural strategies people use to define their own time? What does the archaeological record tell us about continuities with and breaks from the past? How do objects and texts reflect attitudes and anxieties about the future?

Timecraft invites you to consider the ways in which people use the concept of time to understand the past, define the present, and envision the future. This will be the fourteenth biennial symposium organized by students in the Graduate Group of Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. We encourage graduate students in relevant disciplines, working in any time period, to send us paper proposals on timecraft. Applicants may choose to present their research in the following formats:

  • Several regular panels are intended for full-length paper presentations. 15- to 20-minute papers will be followed by individual, 10-minute Q&A sessions in these panels. While we are planning the regular panels as in-person sessions, we hope to provide space for remotely-delivered papers to those participants who are unable to travel to the area.
  • One lightning panel is intended as an opportunity to share works-in-progress, and is geared towards fostering a hybrid mode of participation, allowing both remote and in-person participants to bring ideas into conversation. Five-to seven-minute introductions of the works-in-progress will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A after each paper.

Application process: Applicants are encouraged to submit abstracts to either or both types of panels, provided that the two submissions are separate works. We will consider submissions from graduate students at any point in their degree. All proposals should be sent to the BMC Graduate Symposium Committee at biensymp@brynmawr.edu by Friday May 5th, 2023, 5:00 PM EST.

  • To apply for the regular panel please send an abstract of 300-words to us, specifying your preferred panel format in the subject line of your email.
  • To apply for the lightning panel, please send a 150-word abstract to us, specifying your preferred panel format in the subject line of your email.

Review and Acceptance Process: The committee will assess submissions through a blind review process. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by Monday May 22nd, 2023.

Please contact us with any questions regarding the symposium at biensymp@brynmawr.edu.

Please visit this link to see a list of some suitable topics for Timecraft.

Advanced Summer Course: ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in Situ’

Advanced Summer Course: ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in Situ’

Centre of Excellence ‘Heritage BG’ Nessebăr,

Bulgaria, 12-15 September 2023

Organised and convened by Emmanuel Moutafov, Ida Toth and Andreas Rhoby

Overview

The Advanced Summer Course ‘Byzantine Epigraphy in situ’ offers a training programme to doctoral and early-career scholars, who wish to gain experience in using epigraphic material for research. The aim of the course is to advance the knowledge of medieval and early modern Greek inscriptional culture and its contributions to the overall heritage of Byzantium and the Balkans. The course will provide a unique opportunity to read, examine, and interpret inscriptions in situ, that is, in their architectural, iconographic, liturgical, art-historical, social and cultural contexts.

For more information, see the website: https://phd-edu.nasledstvo.bg/

 

CFP Deadline Extension: CLARE DGA Graduate Student Conference

The University of Calgary’s Classic and Religion Departmental Graduate Association is hosting its graduate student conference this May 4-5. We want to announce an extension for abstract submissions from our original deadline of February 28th to the new deadline of March 20th. Accepted presenters can now expect to hear back from us on whether they have been selected on March 31st  

[Below] you will find our Call for Papers with this updated information. Abstracts, along with any questions, should be directed to our organizational email, classicreligiondga@ucalgary.ca

Sincerely,

Brandon Sonmor (he/him)

CLARE DGA President

_____

Call for Papers:

Emotions Under Duress: Responses to Disaster and How People Feel
Classics and Religion Graduate Student Conference

University of Calgary
May 4th -5th

The University of Calgary’s Classics and Religion Departmental Graduate Association is holding
its Graduate student conference on May 4-5, in a hybrid fashion, with presenters in person and
on Zoom at the Nickle Galleries.

The theme of our conference is the examination of human emotion in the midst of catastrophe,
either public or private. Cicero, in his work, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, briefly ponders
the vocabulary of emotional language, attempting to translate the Greek term, pathos, which
Aristotle used to describe the different emotional states of humans. More interesting than the
term he settles on for emotions of the mind, perturbatio, is the fact that he first considers morbos,
‘diseases,’ as an appropriately literal translation. As we emerge from the isolation of the recent
pandemic, the time seems apt to investigate our relationship to the mental and physical morbi
that humanity have faced in the past and continue to face today. In the humanities, from history,
literature, philosophy, religion, and everything in between, such responses to disaster are crucial
pieces in furthering the knowledge of our respective fields. Our goal is thus to explore people’s
existence in and around such crises, through an interdisciplinary lens, across different times and
cultures, to reveal a reflection of our own current experiences that allows us to better understand
our own present emotional conditions.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
– Literary, visual, and historical responses to catastrophe
– Literary, visual, and historical explorations of the emotional response to private/public
catastrophe
– Theoretical and/or philosophical discussions on emotion and disaster
– Studies of art history and architecture in and around eras of historical
disasters/catastrophes and/or immense social change.
– The study of different oppressed and underrepresented minorities and marginalized
peoples throughout history
– The study of mental health as it pertains to different cultures, religions, and times
– And much more!
We welcome submissions from Graduate students in disciplines across the sphere of the
‘humanities,’ including approaches that are based in history, literature, and theory (although not
exclusive to these fields and approaches). Please submit your abstracts, no greater than 300
words in length, to classicreligiondga@ucalgary.ca in a PDF or Word document by March 20 th ,
2023. Accepted submitters can expect to be notified by March 31st, 2023. Paper presentations at
the time of the conference should not exceed 20 minutes.
Any questions should be directed to the conference organizers at
classicsreligiondga@ucalgary.ca.

AntCom Call for Applications

10 funded PhDs opportunities within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities” (AntCom)

Are you interested in cultural heritage, reception studies and/or the new frontiers of manuscript studies? Are you passionate about cutting-edge research but you also want to boost your skills by learning about new approaches and technologies? We might have something for you.

We are a network of four universities (University of Southern Denmark, University of Verona, University of Salento, University of Santiago de Compostela), funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Action, Grant Agreement 101073543. We have created an innovative training program called “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities”, where we will investigate various aspects of the reception of Graeco-Roman cultural heritage (manuscript, linguistic and narrative) in Europe.

We advertise:

  • 10 PhD positions

PhD candidates are expected to be recruited either from 01/09/2023 to 31/08/2026 or from 01/10/2023 to 30/09/2026, depending on the enrolling institution, under a 36- month research contract and will be enrolled in the PhD program starting from the 2023-2024 academic year. Depending on the chosen fellowship (details in the call), PhDs will be based at one of the consortium’s universities. Mutual secondments are part of the program.

We offer a generous living and research allowance (gross amounts):

  • Living: 3,400 €/month corrected by a country-specific coefficient established by the European Commission
  • Mobility allowance: 600 €/month
  • Family allowance (optional): 660 €/month.

Deadline for the application is the 24th of April

Interested applicants will find information on the training program, on each fellowship as well as details on specific requirements and the application process on the consortium’s website: www.antcom.eu. For further questions you are welcome to contact the project’s PI Aglae Pizzone (pizzone@sdu.dk) or the project’s project manager Claudia Zichi (czichi@sdu.dk). We look forward to receiving your applications!

 

OUBS 25th International Graduate Conference

We are delighted to announce that registration for the Oxford University Byzantine Society’s 25th Annual International Graduate Conference for the 24th – 25th February ‘Passing Judgement: Distinctions, Separations, and Contradictions’ is now open!

Please use the links below to register for in person attendance (at the History Faculty, George Street OX12BE) or online. All papers will be delivered in-person, with the proceedings broadcast on a Zoom link that will circulate via email. We are greatly indebted to our sponsors and co-organisers and the team who have put their hard work into the two-day event.

The costs for attendance are as follows: 

In person attendance: £15 for students / £20 for non-students

Online attendance: £5 for students / £6 for non students

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/passing-judgement-distinctions-separations-and-contradictions-25th-igc-tickets-537684327297

You can view the programme and abstracts of speakers at https://oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com/accessible-programme-oubs-25th-international-graduate-conference/. The programme may change at short notice due to unforeseen circumstances, but we will endeavor to keep the programme on our website up to date to minimise disruption.

Please note, there is the option to pay either in advance through Eventbrite, or to pay on the day The second option is preferable as it saves the Eventbrite fee. Eventbrite charges 6.95% and £0.59 per ticket sold (plus VAT on the fee), which is almost £2 of each ticket. We now accept both card and cash (and have fixed our card machine). Please use the ‘Pay at Door’ option to register your interest even if not paying in advance, as this helps gauge participant numbers.

The conference is run on a tight budget and all funds go into its running, from the bursaries for travelling speakers, the lunches, refreshments, and the speakers’ dinner.

Please see above the programme, and we look forward to welcoming you to Oxford to celebrate a quarter-century of postgraduate Late Antique and Byzantine research with the OUBS. Long may it continue.

Best wishes,

Nathan, Tom, Jamie, and Yan.

OUBS Conference Committee

—————–

Oxford University Byzantine Society

byzantine.society@gmail.com

http://oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/oxbyz

Introduction to Computational Text Analysis for Byzantinists

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and BSANA are pleased to offer a three-part Computational Text Analysis workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Dr. Jakub Kabala of Davidson College.

Introduction to Computational Text Analysis for Byzantinists, workshop by Jakub Kabala (Davidson College), via Zoom, March 15, March 22, March 29, 2023, 12:00–2:00 pm (EDT)

This online workshop will offer Byzantinists an applied introduction to computational text analysis. Over the course of three sessions, participants will 1) learn the basics of programming with the Wolfram Language in Mathematica; 2) experiment with a series of text analysis functions on a common set of biblical texts (in both Greek and English); and 3) apply their new skills to a digital Byzantine text of their own choosing.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is six hours of instruction and an additional one–two hours between each session for light exercises in coding and preparatory work. Participants should have at least beginner level Greek. Participants are required to attend all sessions. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes Sunday, March 5, 2023.

Who is eligible?

  • Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after October 2014) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Graduate students and early career researchers outside of North America will be placed on a waiting list and contacted if space is available.
  • All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form (https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/introduction-to-computational-text-analysis.

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

 

Database of Religious History: Call for Contributions

The Database of Religious History, based at the University of British Columbia, is a digital, open access, and queryable repository of quantitative and qualitative information with the goal of covering the breadth of human religious experience. Begun in 2013, the DRH now has almost a thousand entries by qualified scholars, covering religious groups, places, and texts (the three types of polls that make up the entries in the database), but we need your help! As part of a new initiative we are attempting to expand our entries that deal with Late Antique and Medieval Christianity and Judaism, and Early Islam, as well as other contemporary religious movements in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. In an effort to build the database in as swift a manner as possible, and improve the quality of any analyses produced with it, the DRH is offering $300 CAD honoraria for each completed entry.

If you are a PhD candidate or above and would like to contribute an entry on any religious group, place, or text, please contact Dr. Ian Randall (irandall@mail.ubc.ca) or sign up for the database at https://religiondatabase.org/landing/get-involved and select Dr. Randall as your entry editor.

© 2023 Byzantine Studies Association of North America, Inc. (BSANA) . All Rights Reserved.