ABOUT         SCHEDULE        REGISTRATION


BSC 2020


For the schedule and abstracts in .pdf form, please click here.

For a virtual book display from The Scholar’s Choice, please click here.

For a virtual book display from Cambridge University Press, please click here.

For Zoom instructions for presenters and chairs, please click here.


Friday, October 23


Session 1
8 Pacific / 11 Eastern / 15 UCT

1A - Makerspace

Chair - Benjamin Anderson

Shannon Steiner, “‘Behold, Philosophers, and Understand – This is the Accomplishment of Art:’ Art-Making as Knowledge Production in Byzantium”

Hallie Meredith, “Late Roman Process Art: Cross-Media Carving in the 4th– to 8th-Century AD Mediterranean”

Justin Wilson, “The Origin of the Crafts According to Byzantine Rosette Caskets”

Warren Woodfin, “Orthography as Evidence for Mosaic Workshops in the 11th and 12th Centuries”

1B - Byzantium South

Chair - Elizabeth Bolman

Mikael Muehlbauer, “Churches built in Monumental Ruins in Medieval Ethiopia”

Felege-Selam Yirga, “Towards a Reconstruction of the Career of Apollinarios, Patriarch of Alexandria (551-571 CE)”

Arsany Paul, “The ‘Dead’ Burying the Dead: Afterlife and Interment in Pachomian Sources”

Mary Farag, “The Church of St. Mary in the Kidron Valley: A Cultural Biography”

Session 2
10 Pacific / 13 Eastern / 17 UCT
2A - Byzantine Gender and Sexuality

Chair - Leonora Neville

Derek Krueger, “Repenting Sodomy: From Penitential Canons to the Life of Niphon”

Maria Dell'Isola, “Female Holiness and ‘New’ Temporalities in the Life of Mary the Younger and the Life of Thomaïs of Lesbos”

Luis Salés, “What Is ‘Byzantine’ Andropology?”

2B - Image and Text(ile)

Chair - Galina Tirnanic

Karin Krause, “What Was Seen on the Textile Called the Mandylion? Interpretations of an “Unpainted” Image in Byzantine Theology”

Anna Carroll, “Anno, ‘A Lion Before Princes’: The Siegburg Lion Silk”

Jennifer Ball, “Byzantine Monumentality: The Case for Textiles”

Session 3
12 Pacific / 15 Eastern / 19 UCT
3A - Authority and Hierarchy

Chair - Tia Kolbaba

Joe Glynias, “The Bilingual Administration of Byzantine Antioch (969-1084)”

Hannah Ewing, “The Multidimensional Leader: Authoritative Flexibility of Byzantine Abbesses”

Anysia Metrakos, “’Emperors on the Inside: The Bishop as Emperor in the Constantinian Church Basilica”

Edward Trofimov, “Religiosity and Social Control in Local Communities According to the Twelfth-Century Deuterokanonarion

3B - Image and Meaning

Chair - Fotini Kondyli

Ivan Drpić, “Image as Medicine: Pictorial Therapy in the Oxford Mēnologion

Samantha Truman, “’Cursed is Everyone Who Hangs on a Tree’: The Execution of Judas Iscariot in Two Byzantine Marginal Psalters”

Megan Boomer, “Shining Symbols for Sectarian Eyes: The Twelfth-Century Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem”

Marina Mandrikova, “Women in Hell: An Exploration of Crime and Punishment in Byzantine, Post-Byzantine, and Slavic Monumental Painting”

Saturday, October 24


6 Pacific / 9 Eastern / 13 UCT
MJC Graduate Student Development Panel on Academic Writing


Session 4
8 Pacific / 11 Eastern / 15 UCT
4A - Byzantium North


Chair – Christian Raffensperger

Thomas Lecaque, “Between Pope and Emperors: Dalmatia in the Time of the First Crusade”

Ozlem Eren, “Studenica Monastery and St. Demetrios Church in Vladimir – Distant Twins?”

Sarah Luginbill, “Connecting with Constantinople: Byzantine-German Relations and Portable Altars, c. 975-1195 CE”

Georgi Mitov, “Revisiting the Byzantine Archive of Zographou Monastery on Mt Athos: Byzantine Fiscal Terminology in the Slavic Context”
4B - Texts and Readers


Chair – Alexander Riehle

Byron MacDougall, “Prereqs for Aphthonius: An Anonymous Byzantine Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge

Francesco Monticini, “A ‘Nostalgic Gaze’ Towards Antiquity: The Phenomenon of Classicism in Late Byzantium and the Renaissance”

Cahit Mete Oguz, “The Protection and Exploitation of the Peasantry as Literary Topos within Middle Byzantine Historical Sources”

John Kee, “A Hero Named for the Frontier: The Landscape of Digenes Akrites in Comparative Perspective”

4C - Community and Identity through Icons

Chair – Lynn Jones

Peter Boudreau, “Keeping Time in Byzantium: The Case of Sinai’s Calendar Icons”

Lindsay Corbett, “The Icon of the Virgin Pammakaristos in Ottoman Constantinople”

Mateusz Ferens, “Memory Eternal: Dormition of St. Ephrem as Mnemonic Landscape”

Business Lunch:
10:30 Pacific / 13:30 Eastern / 17:30 UCT
Plenary Session:
Teaching Byzantium

12:30 Pacific / 15:30 Eastern / 19:30 UCT

Chair - Marica Cassis


Fotini Kondyli, “Digital Humanities Meet Byzantine Studies in the Classroom”

Aurora Camaño, “Missing Material? Teaching Byzantine Material Culture Without Teaching Collections”

Brad Hostetler, “Teaching Byzantine Art Without Art”

Young Kim, “Byzantine History from Scratch: A Recipe for a New Course”


Sunday, October 25


12 Pacific / 15 Eastern / 19 UCT
MJC Graduate Student Development Workshop on Interviewing Skills 
BYZANTINE STUDIES CONFERENCE 2020
Byzantine Studies Association of North America