https://bsc2020.net BSC 2020 Sun, 07 Jun 2020 18:32:14 +0000 https://bsc2020.net en https://bsc2020.net/Registration Tue, 26 May 2020 23:25:30 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/Registration Thank you to everyone who registered and attended! - The Virtual Arrangements Committee https://bsc2020.net/About-BSC Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:13:04 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/About-BSC THE FIRST BSC from “The Byzantine Studies Conference 1975-1999:Looking Back After the First 25 Years” by Alice-Mary Talbot -- full text here I believe one can trace the origins of the BSC back to 1972 when the Senior Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks decided to make a momentous one-time departure from the traditional program of the annual spring symposium. Up to that year, and thereafter, Dumbarton Oaks symposia had been organized around a unifying theme, with one or more symposiarchs planning the program and inviting appropriate speakers, who were typically established scholars of a certain age and predominantly male. In 1972 the decision was made to invite a number of younger scholars who had recently completed their dissertations to speak on their research in progress; the symposium was entitled "Current Work in Medieval and Byzantine Studies." Nine papers were delivered, four by men, five by women; clearly change was in the wind. I would argue that this D.O. symposium served to "heighten the consciousness" of North American Byzantinists: they came to realize that there existed no forum in this country for the presentation of papers on current research in Byzantine studies, especially by younger scholars. In the words of Walter Kaegi, co-founder of the BSC, "No existing learned society or annual meeting in the early 1970s could or would provide sufficient annual space on their program for a critical mass, not merely a token representation, of interdisciplinary Byzantinists to communicate and discuss their latest research. The unwillingness of the 1974 American Historical Association's program committee to accept a full complement of Byzantine applicants was one of several catalysts for the creation of a new specialized conference." Approaches were made to a number of societies and conferences for some form of affiliation, but in the end this kind of arrangement was rejected because no single group could accommodate the wide range of interests of Byzantinists. Consequently, shortly after the D.O. symposium returned to its usual format in 1973, a group of Byzantinists who were mostly in their thirties or early forties decided to launch a new conference designed to "serve as an annual forum for the presentation and discussion of papers embodying the current research on all aspects of Byzantine history and culture." It was deliberately scheduled for the fall, to balance the spring symposium at D.O., and was open to scholars of all ages, including graduate students. To ensure the quality of papers, abstracts were to be submitted to a program committee which would select the speakers to be invited. Walter Kaegi of the University of Chicago deserves credit as the person who initially conceived of the idea and played a key role in planning the initial conference. I was asked to serve as co-chair that first year and as local arrangements chairman in Cleveland, even though I had no university affiliation and had to arrange for the conference to be held at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Walter and I also chaired the program committee. In 1975 there were of course no funds upon which to draw, so the first conference was a real bare-bones, shoestring affair. The registration fee was $7.00, including abstracts, and the motel rooms cost $17.00 for a double. The conference lasted two days, and forty papers were delivered. We hoped that perhaps 75 people would come; to our amazement, about 120 registered. The inaugural banquet of home-cooked Greek food was provided free of charge through the extraordinary generosity of the women of the cathedral of SS. Constantine and Helen. https://bsc2020.net/Schedule Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:13:06 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/Schedule 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 UCTMJC 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  https://bsc2020.net/7-VI-2020 Sun, 07 Jun 2020 18:32:14 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/7-VI-2020 7. June 2020 The officers and board members of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America affirm that Black Lives Matter. We mourn the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other victims of racism and white supremacy. We stand in solidarity with activists who are protesting police violence and systemic racism. We lament that our own field of study has been deployed to justify false narratives of white supremacy and western civilization. We believe that silence is complicity, that words without action are hollow, and we commit to battle against racism and white supremacy in our scholarship, teaching, and public engagement. We implore our members, colleagues, and partners to do the same. In an effort to combat systemic forms of racism and exclusion in our discipline, we establish the Byzantinists of Color Fund. Its seed is $7,000 previously allocated to support graduate student travel to the (now virtual) BSC 2020. Donations to BSANA made via this link will be directed towards this fund until it doubles. [The fund has since doubled - thank you to everyone who contributed!] The fund will support travel to the BSC by people of color, with priority to graduate students, contingent faculty, and early-career / pre-tenure scholars, beginning in Cleveland 2021. Graduate student stipends will continue to be awarded as before. We announce an initiative to Decolonize Byzantine Studies. We invite reflections on the question: Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? [The first forum for discussion was a webinar, “Towards a Critical Historiography of Byzantium,” held on 13 August in collaboration with the New Critical Approaches to the Byzantine World Network. For more information, click here.] https://bsc2020.net/Main Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:13:05 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/Main BSC 2020 THE VIRTUAL BSC The 46th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference took place online,  23-25 October. Thank you to everyone who participated! The schedule and abstracts may be viewed here.  https://bsc2020.net/Committees Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:13:05 +0000 BSC 2020 https://bsc2020.net/Committees Virtual Arrangements for BSC 2020 are managed by the Governing Board of BSANA. The Program Committee for BSC 2020 is composed of: Diliana Angelova Christina ChristoforatouYoung Richard KimAshley PurpuraChristian Raffensperger (chair)