New Critical Approaches to the Byzantine World Network

About

byzantine network

This network was funded from 2018 to 2020.

Byzantine studies have not generally tended to be at the cutting edge of theoretical or methodological innovation. A host of more prosaic, albeit essential, scholarly tasks have tended to dominate a discipline in which large bodies of text remain unedited, untranslated, and uncommented and many basic lexical, prosopographical, and typological tools are still lacking. Nevertheless, in recent years new critical and theoretical studies of Byzantium have started to emerge, perhaps most notably in the study of narrative, materiality, and intellectual history. These studies, however, remain both relatively rare and (more often than not) confined to a single sub-disciplinary field (e.g. literature, archaeology, or history).

This network aimed to promote new critical approaches to the study of the Byzantine world and to join up such approaches as exist, by cutting across the chronological, geographical, linguistic, nationalist, and disciplinary fissures that have institutionalised the fragmentation of Byzantine studies into discrete domains of enquiry. We were seeking to do this by developing a platform for engaged scholars, with different disciplinary trainings, to discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges facing them, test their own research in a supportive environment, and to exploit the opportunities that new critical approaches offer the study of the Byzantine world (broadly conceived).

Our events therefore were not starting from a disciplinary or regional core but addressed major theoretical questions that unite studies of different periods, places and bodies of materials. These conceptual spheres included but ere not limited to imperialism, colonialism and post-colonialism, questions of object/text and context, questions of gender, materialism and materiality in Byzantine studies.

The network was explicitly imagined as a collective venture. As well as testing new critical approaches in the study of the Byzantine world, we were seeking to be equally critical in rethinking the way we do Byzantine studies. In this spirit, the network understands the testing less hierarchical forms of knowledge exchange and new technologies for collaborative research to be integral elements of the network’s aims. It is led by early career researchers.

Contact

Mirela Ivanova  mirela.ivanova@univ.ox.ac.uk 

Matthew Kinloch matthew.kinloch@univie.ac.at

 

Alexandra Vukovich: alexandra.vukovich@seh.ox.ac.uk

This network was generously funded by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and supported by TORCH.

People

Convenors:

Jules Gleeson

Mirela Ivanova

Hugh Jeffery

Matthew Kinloch

Nicholas Matheou

Sophie Moore

Alexandra Vukovich

Events
Past Events

New Critical Approaches to the Byzantine World

 
Circular hand-drawn map with dense text in the corners of the sheet
Balkanism: Approaching Southeastern Europe (March 2019) 
A webinar that sought to investigate and think with one of the most influential frameworks with which scholars have approached the Balkans. Workshop led by:  
Alexandra Vukovich (St Edmund Hall) and Mirela Ivanova (Balliol College), who both work on the medieval Slavonic world’s interactions with Byzantium and other medieval cultures, Frankish, Viking, Latin and the like. 
Reading **Todorova, M. ‘Introduciton’, Imagining the Balkans (2nd ed 2009) 
 
Subalternity and Byzantine Studies: Critically Imagining the Masses in History (April 2019) 
A webinar that outlined the concept of subalternity as it has been developed in Marxist and postcolonial critical theory and explored its potential for understanding the medieval empire of New Rome commonly known as Byzantium.   
 
Imperialism, Colonialism and Postcolonialism in the Byzantine World (May 2019) 
An event that sought to critically assess the usefulness of the frameworks of imperialism, colonialism and postcolonialism to the study of the Byzantine world, from a range of perspectives, historical, archaeological, literary, historiographical, and through a discussion-led approach. 
 
In the Name of the Father, the Husband, or some other Man (July 2019) 
A group discussion facilitated by Matthew Kinloch (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Moving Byzantium Project, FWF) on the topic of gender, characters, and identificatory practices in late Byzantine historiography on the basis of his pre-circulated paper ‘In the Name of the Father, the Husband, or some other Man: The Identification and Subordination of Female Characters in the Chronikē Syngraphē of George Akropolites’. 
 
Bringing Research of the Byzantine World Up to Speed with Post-Butler Gender Theory (October 2019) 
A session focused on the break-out thinking of Judith Butler, an attempt to make some headway in bringing Byzantine Studies into the fold of contemporary gender research. 
 
Special Lecture: National Byzantiums: Narratives of Empire in the Historiographies of Southeastern Europe (November 2019) 
Michaelmas Term Special Lecture 
Professor Diana Mishkova, Director of the Center for Advanced Study, Sofia and a Professor in Modern History. 
 
New Critical Approaches to Byzantine Gender (January 2020) 
A one-day event 
Speakers included:  
  • Mirela Ivanova (University of Oxford) 
  • Alexandra Vukovich (University of Oxford) 
  • Jules Gleeson (University of Vienna) 
  • Matthew Kinloch (Dumbarton Oaks) 
Orientalism in 2020 (April 2020) 
A webinar that examined how politics and ideology inform the construction and reproduction of knowledge with a specific focus on Edward Said’s Orientalism.  
 
A Global History of (Political) Thought? (April 2020) 
Webinar:  The aim was to think about some of the ways in which the history of political thought otherwise known as intellectual history, and especially that associated with the so-called Cambridge school of ‘contextualism’, has engaged with the questions posed by globalism, globalisation and the prospect of global history.  
 
Putting Modes of Production to Work Critical Materialist Conceptions of History before Capitalism (May 2020) 
A webinar to provide an overview of modes of production as an operative concept, the levels at which it’s been applied and the political stakes that have defined key debates. 
 
Towards a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies (August 2020) 
A webinar to promote discussion of the question, “Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline?,”  
 
Towards a Critical Queer and Gendered Analysis of the Kanonarion (November 2020) 
A Conversation with Derek Krueger, Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor of Religious Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).  
The webinar discussed the penitential manual known as the Kanonarion as a source for the history of sexuality and gender in Byzantium. 
 
Byzantine Intersectionality with Roland Betancourt (UC Irvine) (December 2020) 
A webinar to discuss the recent publication of Roland Betancourt’s monograph, Byzantine Intersectionality, with the author.   
 
How to Do Byzantium with Words – Scrutinizing Performativity (January 2021) 
A webinar that examined the multifaceted concept of performativity, in general, and the possibilities of its use as a tool for the interpretation of written discourse. 
 
Reintroducing Aksum to Byzantinists (February 2021) 
Speaker: Felege-Selam Yirga, Department of History (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) 
A webinar that addressed issues of continuity and change in late antique and medieval Ethiopia by focusing on the inscriptional evidence left by the Aksumites, and the way modern scholars have addressed this issue. 
 
Our Daily Byzantium: Medieval Heritage, Nation-building, and Politics in Serbia (March 2021) 
An event that brought together an international group of historians, art historians, and cultural theorists to discuss cultural heritage and nationalism in Serbia and the wider Balkans. 
Speakers: 
  • Dr Alexandra Vukovich (TORCH, University of Oxford), Heritage (Mis)management 
  • Dr Milan Vukašinović (University of Uppsala), Ink, Bronze, and the Blood of the Nation  
  • Prof. Filip Ejdus (Faculty of Political Sciences, Belgrade), Stefan Nemanja and the Cracked Byzantine Helmet  
  • Dr Milena Repajić (Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade), The (not so) Subtle Messages of Monumental Stefan Nemanja: Medievalism and the Reshaping of Historical Memory in Post-Socialist Serbia 
  • Prof. Marko Šuica (Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade), The Challenges of Teaching Medieval History in Serbia’s New History Curriculum 
  • Prof. Aleksandar Ignjatović (Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade), Byzantium Perfected: Nation-building through Architectural Tropes in 19th- and 20th-century Serbia 
  • Dr Višnja Kisić (Europa Nostra Serbia/UNESCO Chair MA in Cultural Policy and Management), Making Serbia Great Again: The (Un)Expected Embrace of Neoliberalism and Nationalism 
  • Prof. Miloš Jovanović (UCLA), Historicism or the Cultural Logic of Postsocialist Capitalism in Belgrade 
 
Network Wrap-Up Event (January 2022) 
Presentation of Network Aims, Activities & Outputs 
Research Questions & Themes 
1. Empire, Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Nationalism (with Mirela Ivanova) 
2. Gender & Sexuality (with Jules Gleeson) 
3. Historical Materialism (with Nik Matheou) 
4. Working across disciplines (with Sophie Moore) 
5. Medievalism/Byzantinism & Heritage (with Alexandra Vukovich) 
On-going Projects 
1. Publications 
2. Research Projects 
 
Network members: 
  • Jules Gleeson (Vienna) 
  • Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield) 
  • Matthew Kinloch (Oslo) 
  • Nik Matheou (London) 
  • Sophie Moore (Newcastle) 
  • Alexandra Vukovich (Oxford & KCL) 

 

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