Byzantium & Friends

Jesse Torgerson (Wesleyan University) and I take a stab at understanding time, as it was measured, structured, and experienced in so many overlapping ways by Christian east Romans. Their days, months, and years were defined by the state tax cycle, the Church festival cycle, and nature itself, to name the most important temporal grids. Jesse's recent monograph focuses on an author (or two) who made interesting innovations in chronology: The Chronographia of George the Synkellos and Theophanes: The Ends of Time in Ninth-Century Constantinople (Brill 2022).

A conversation with Diana Mishkova (Center for Advanced Study, Sofia) about how the national historiographies of Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania cope with Byzantium -- how they try to appropriate, incorporate, circumvent, or abjure it, and so always reinvent it in the process. The conversation is based on Diana's comprehensive and lucid analysis in her recent book Rival Byzantiums: Empire and Identity in Southeastern Europe (Cambridge University Press 2023).

A conversation with Ben Anderson (Cornell University) and returning guest Mirela Ivanova (University of Sheffield) on their co-edited volume of papers on the question Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography (Penn State University Press 2023). We talk about how colonial, imperialist, or exploitative practices and ideologies have marked the history of our field, whether by making it complicit in them or by colonizing it. You can access Ben and Mirela's compelling introduction to the volume here.

In this episode, Marion and I talk about our new co-authored book, The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361-630 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). For those interested in the military history of this period, this book contains a downright mutinous revision of the organization of the East Roman field armies and the changing priorities behind their deployments. We also take the opportunity to discuss revisionist scholarship in general, the kinds we like and those we would court-martial.

A conversation with Peter Heather (King's College, London) about his new book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300 (New York: Knopf, 2023). Peter is one of the leading historians of the fall of the western Roman empire and the emergence there of the post-Roman, "barbarian" kingdoms. He now brings a revisionist approach to the emergence of the Church in (mostly western) Europe. This book covers a lot of ground, and so we focus on the early period, where his arguments affect the east too. We talk about the role of contingency, the near-miss of Homoian Christianity, the decisive role of secular rulers, and much more. 

A conversation with Jennifer Westerfeld (University of Louisville) on the scripts that were used to write ancient Egyptian, especially hieroglyphs. Their last attested use was in the 390s AD, putting the end of their long history in our period. Meanwhile, Greek, Roman, and Christian observers were developing their own theories about how the script worked, often quite fantastic, and reacted to texts that were inscribed in public spaces. The conversation is based on Jennifer's fascinating book Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019). For more on Coptic in this period, see episode 13.

A conversation with Timothy Miller (Salisbury University) about philanthropic institutions in Constantinople, especially hospitals, orphanages, and leprosaria. Tim has done more than anyone to illuminate these remarkable places, starting with his impressive monograph The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press 1985, 2nd ed. 1997). His current thinking on hospitals, orphanages, leprosaria can be found in the chapter 'Philanthropic Institutions,' in S. Bassett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Constantinople (Cambridge 2022) 245-261. 

A conversation with Valentina Grasso (Bard College) on Arabia before Islam. This used to be known primarily from preserved Arabic poetry, but the picture is now filling in from inscriptions and contemporary texts. There were competing kingdoms, tribal coalitions, and foreign empires with a stake in trade routes. There were pagans, Jews, and Christians, as well as generic or "cautious" monotheists. The cultural background of the Koran has never been known in such richness and complexity. The conversation is based on Valentina's recent book, Pre-Islamic Arabia: Societies, Politics, Cults, and Identities during Late Antiquity (Cambridge 2023).

A conversation with Jeremy Swist (Brandeis University) on why some heavy metal bands write music about Roman and Byzantine history. Expect "good" and "bad" emperors to be reversed here! Jeremy has published much on this, including 'Satan's Empire: Ancient Rome's Anti-Christian Appeal in Extreme Metal,' Metal Music Studies 5 (2019) 35-51; 'Headbanging to Byzantium: The Reception of the Byzantine Empire in Metal Music,' in "What Byzantinism is this in Istanbul!" Byzantium in Popular Culture (Istanbul 2021) 200-231; and online, 'Enjoy My Flames' (Lapham's Quarterly) and 'Dawn of a Dark Age: Constantine the Great in Heavy Metal Music.'

A wide-ranging conversation with Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University) on the changing nature of the academic profession, especially regarding the erosion of academic freedom through the expansion of contingent academic labor and direct attacks on it by the states. Is research becoming increasingly vulnerable to outside political pressures? The conversation is based partly on Jacques's book Campus Confidential: How College Works, or Doesn’t, for Professors, Parents, and Students (Melville House, 2017), and partly on articles that he has written for news outlets, including MSNBC and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A conversation with Anna Sitz (Universität Heidelberg) on how Byzantines read ancient inscriptions - or modified, re-used, and defaced them. Ancient cities were full of inscribed texts, many on temple walls or referring to the gods in prominent ways. How did Christians cope with these monuments when they took over the cities of Greece and Asia Minor? We talk about a number of cases, including the massive inscription of Augustus' Res Gestae in Ankara. The conversation is based on Anna's book Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers: The Afterlives of Temples and Their Texts in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean (Oxford University Press 2023).

A conversation with Anna Henderson (ARC Humanities Press) about the world of academic publishing today, including its challenges, opportunities, and aspirations. ARC is a fairly recent venture, but has already published a number of excellent books in medieval studies (including on Byzantium). You can find out more about it here: https://www.arc-humanities.org In fact, the very first episode of this podcast was on a book published by ARC.

A conversation with Robin Fleming (Boston College) about how the lives and material circumstances of people in Roman Britain changed when the imperial state and its economy withdrew from the island in the fifth century AD. Among other topics, we talk about food, skills, recycling of materials, and adaptation. The conversation is based on Robin's recent book The Material Fall of Roman Britain, 300-525 AD (University of Pennsylvania Press 2021).

A conversation with Richard Calis (Utrecht University) about Martin Crusius (aka Kraus: 1526-1607 AD), one of the first philologist-historians who tried to reconstruct Byzantine history from the sources. We talk about his interest in the Greek language and the Ottoman empire, in using Byzantine sources to understand antiquity, and his working methods -- all in an era before there was much scholarship to guide him. The conversation is based on Richard's chapter 'Martin Crusius's Lost Byzantine Legacy,' in N. Aschenbrenner and J. Ransohoff, eds., The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2021) 105-142.

A conversation with Fotini Kondyli (University of Virginia) about our changing picture of rural communities in late Byzantium, based on her book Rural Communities in Late Byzantium: Resilience and Vulnerability in the Northern Aegean (Cambridge University Press 2022). We talk about resilience in times of crisis -- the fourteenth century was not an easy one! -- and about how we can reimagine and restore the power and agency of these rural non-elites. We also talk about survey archaeology, one of our main tools for accessing these communities.

A conversation with Anna Kelley (University of St. Andrews) about women's labor and occupations in the Roman and later Roman empire. It turns out that they may have engaged in more types of business and workshop production, especially in textile manufacture and marketing, than contemporary gender norms suggest. The conversation is based on Anna's article 'Searching for Professional Women in the Mid to Late Roman Textile Industry,' Past and Present 258 (2023) 3-43. You can read that article at https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac007

A conversation with Scott Bruce (Fordham University) about dragons, ancient, medieval, and early modern, from around the world. Where did our "canonical" image of the dragon come from? What other kinds of dragons existed? What did dragons mean in different cultures? The conversation is based on Scott's recent anthology, The Penguin Book of Dragons (2021), which has a chapter on Byzantine dragons.

A conversation with Amanda Luyster (College of the Holy Cross) on how to organize a museum exhibition, from conception and design to securing the objects and planning events around it. We also talk about the famous tiles of Chertsey Abbey (UK), a royal commission that evoked the Crusades with artistic allusions to Byzantium and the Islamic world. The exhibition, Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece, will run from 26 January to 6 April, 2023, at the Cantor Art Gallery in Worcester, MA, so catch it if you are in the region. There is a companion volume too, edited by Amanda, with the same title, on which our conversation is based.

A conversation with Paul Stephenson (Penn State University) about the impact of lead mining and smelting on the miners themselves, the communities around them, and on plants, animals, and human beings across the Roman empire. This is part of a broader and ongoing project on metallurgy and environmental violence. Paul integrates the recent science of Roman lead into his history of the empire, in New Rome: The Empire in the East (Harvard University Press 2022).

In this end-of-the-year episode, guest host Marion Kruse (University of Cincinnati) interviews me about writing narrative history. Why and how should we write narrative histories? What do they accomplish in the overall economy of the scholarly production of knowledge? What pitfalls did I identify in writing my new history of Byzantium, and how did I try to avoid falling into them? (Apologies for the self-indulgent length of this episode. I was too busy talking and didn't keep good track of the time.)

A conversation with Jake Ransohoff (Simon Fraser University) on the practice of blinding in Byzantium. Why and how was it done? Why was it more prominent in some periods rather than in others? And how did its victims cope with this disability that the state had imposed on them for (usually) crimes of treason? The conversation is based on Jake's dissertation (Sightless Eyes, Broken Bodies: Blinding, Punishment, and the Politics of Disability in the Byzantine World, Harvard University, 2022).

A conversation with Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham) on the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm (ca. 730 to 787 AD). What was the problem with religious icons? What did the "Isaurian" emperors Leon III and Konstantinos V try to do about it, and why? A great deal of what we used to know, largely by following pro-icon sources, has come undone in the latest research. Where we stand now has been lucidly presented by Leslie in her Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (Bristol Classical Press 2012).

A conversation with Nicholas Morton (Nottingham Trent University) about the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century, the terror that they inspired, and the strategies by which its targets tried to survive them. What did the Mongols think they were doing and how did the Byzantines use diplomacy to deflect the danger and even use it to their advantage? The conversation is based on Nic's just-released book The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (Basic Books 2022).

A conversation with Linda Safran (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto) on the hitherto-unexplored world of Byzantine diagrams. We talk about maps, sundials, and more abstract representations of the world and even God. The conversation is based on Linda's papers in a volume she co-edited, The Diagram as Paradigm: Cross-Cultural Approaches (Dumbarton Oaks 2022), as well as "A Prolegomenon to Byzantine Diagrams,” in the edited volume The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Brepols 2020) 361-382. Also check out her dynamic website on medieval art and architecture.

A conversation with Paroma Chatterjee (University of Michigan) on the power that ancient statues still had in Orthodox Constantinople. In many contexts, they were more prominent than icons. We talk about some of their functions, but also why Byzantine art history is so focused on icons, which were secluded objects, in comparison. The conversation is based on Paroma's recent book Between the Pagan Past and Christian Present in Byzantine Visual Culture: Statues in Constantinople, 4th-13th Centuries CE (Cambridge University Press 2021).

A conversation with Dan Caner (Indiana University) about the different kinds of charitable giving in early Byzantium. We talk about the pre-Christian background, the role of institutions, and views about wealth. Was giving primarily good for the soul of the giver, and under what conditions, or for the material assistance of the needy?  How could one give to ascetics, who had renounced such needs? The conversation is based on Dan's recent book The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium (University of California Press 2021).

A conversation with Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) about production and consumption in the Roman world, especially by the 90% of the population who are less represented in our literary sources. How did they get by from day to day? What alternatives does the evidence suggest to the "subsistence" model that many ancient historians have used? The conversation is based on a paper on "Household Economics in the Roman Empire and Early Christianity," forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Households, and earlier publications, including The Roman Peasant Project 2009-2014: Excavating the Roman Rural Poor (Penn Museum/University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); “Tracking Liquid Savings at Pompeii: The Coin Hoard Data," Journal of Roman Archaeology 35 (2022) 1-27; and “Tracking Consumption at Pompeii: The Graffiti Lists,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 34 (2021) 552-584.

A conversation with Sergey Ivanov (Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Munich; corresponding member of the British Academy) on the monuments, buildings, and ruins of the Byzantine phase of the City's history. We talk about how to explore them, how to access their history, and even get a feel for the lingering presence of the events that took place in them. We ponder what has been lost and what might yet be found. The conversation is based on Sergey's recent book In Search of Constantinople: A Guidebook through Byzantine Istanbul and Its Surroundings, tr. by Sara Buzadzhi and D. Hoffman, ed. David Hendricks (Istanbul: The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2022).

A conversation with Jonathan Hall (University of Chicago) about how the archaeological past of the city of Argos was reclaimed in the long nineteenth century. What institutions and political debates took shape around the heritage of the past? What role did the ancient travel writer Pausanias play in defining what the past was? What was the interplay between local, national, international, and imperial interests? The conversation is based on Jonathan's book Reclaiming the Past: Argos and its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era (Cornell University Press 2021).

A conversation with Eleni Kefala (University of St. Andrews) on the fall of two empires, the Byzantine and the Aztec. What role did these momentous events play in the emerging identity of western Europe? And how were they experienced by the Romaioi and the native Mexica, especially through the laments that they wrote and sang about these events? The conversation is based on Eleni's book The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C. 2020).

A conversation with Gabriel Radle (University of Notre Dame) on the question of why and when adolescent girls or women "bound up" their hair. Which women did so, and under what circumstances? What kind of headgear was involved? And how did the Byzantine practice compare with that in other societies, ancient and medieval? Our discussion is based on Gabriel's article 'The Veiling of Women in Byzantium: Liturgy, Hair, and Identity in a Medieval Rite of Passage,' Speculum 94 (2019) 1070-1115.

A conversation with Stratis Papaioannou (University of Crete) about the mismatch between modern ideas of literature (on the one hand) and the texts, conventions, and goals of Byzantine authors (on the other). In what sense are those texts "literature"? Should they be compared to classical texts, modern literature, neither, or both? We talk also about how much of it has survived, and how much might have been lost. The conversation was prompted by the release of Stratis' edited volume,The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature (Oxford University Press 2021).

A conversation with Siren Çelik (Marmara University) about the many personas that the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos crafted for himself in his surviving works. In fact, we have more writings from him -- in many genres, and many of a personal nature -- than from any prior Roman emperor. What was he hoping to accomplish and why is he worth reading? The conversation is based on Siren's recent book, Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult (Cambridge University Press 2021).

A conversation with Alexander Olson (independent scholar, British Columbia, Canada) about the secret lives of olive trees and oak trees in Byzantium. Contrary to what you may think, these were not cultivated consistently in the Mediterranean ecosystem of the Middle Ages; their uses to the human population fluctuated over time, giving the trees a history of their own, albeit one shaped by that of the people around them (and vice versa). The conversation is based on Alex's fascinating book, Environment and Society in Byzantium, 650-1150: Between the Oak and the Olive (Palgrave Macmillan 2020).

A conversation with Oana-Maria Cojocaru (Tempere University, Finland) about the images of Byzantine children in our sources, and the experiences that they would have had, once they made it past infancy. Our discussion forms a nice sequel to that with Christian Laes on childbirth (episode 66), and is based on Oana's recent book Byzantine Childhood: Representations and Experiences of Children in Middle Byzantine Society (Routledge 2022).

A conversation with Filippomaria Pontani (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) on the ways that Byzantine scholars engaged with classical texts, and their place in the transmission and study of classical literature from antiquity to the present. In addition to manuscripts, we talk about commentaries, lexika, and encyclopedias. The conversation is based on the magisterial survey that Filippomaria published recently, 'Scholarship in the Byzantine Empire (529-1453),' in the volume History of Ancient Greek Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Byzantine Age, ed. F. Montanari (Brill 2020).

In a fun romp through some of the foibles, evasions, pretensions, and generally bad habits of scholarship, Tina and I take our fields to task for practices that make our eyes roll. Sure, we've probably been guilty of most of these too! But what better place to vent a bit than a podcast? Dedicated listeners will know Tina (Ohio State University) from episodes 4 and 21; she is a veritable co-host of the show.

A conversation with Christian Laes about one of the most joyous, dangerous, and often tragic, moments of life in antiquity and the Middle Ages: childbirth. We discuss the sad fact of infant mortality, the first days of children who survived, and the difficult choices that families had to make if the mother did not survive, but the child did. What was the emotional and demographic impact of the perils of childbirth? The conversation is based on two of Christian's papers, 'Infants between Biological and Social Birth in Antiquity,' Historia 63 (2014) 364-383; and 'Motherless Infancy in the Roman and the Late Ancient World,' in the volume Missing Mothers: Maternal Absence in Antiquity (Leuven 2021) 15-41.

A conversation with Silvia Ronchey (University of Roma Tre) about the famous philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who was murdered in the early fifth century by goons working for Cyril, the bishop of the city. Who was she? What traditions gave her a position of social prominence? To what degree may she be considered a feminist icon? The conversation is based on Silvia's book Hypatia: The True Story, issued now in English translation (de Gruyter 2021). At the end we also talk a bit about the film Agora.

A conversation with Michael Grünbart (University of Münster) about the problem of imperial decision-making. Byzantine emperors are often presented to us as perfectly virtuous monarchs favored by God, but can we pull the veil away from this image and understand the difficult conditions under which they had to make decisions that could potentially cost them their throne? Whom did they consult? How and why did they delegate? Did they have experts? Data? When could they avoid making decisions? As someone in academic middle-management, these questions cut close to home!

A conversation with Jack Tannous (Princeton University) about the "simple believers" who made up the majority of the population of Byzantium (as well as the caliphate and just about any premodern monotheistic society). They probably knew little about the minutiae of theology, but what did they know about their faith, and how important was theology for their religious identity? The discussion is based on Jack's recent book The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton University Press, 2018), which highlights the role of religious practice and interpersonal attachments. 

A conversation with Jen Ball (City University of New York) and Betsy Williams (Dumbarton Oaks, also episode 47) on the study of Byzantine dress and fashion. How do we know what people wore? Was clothing gendered? Why are dress and jewelry studied separately? And can we talk about fashion in Byzantium, or was fashion, as some believe, a modern development? For an excellent introduction to these problems, see Jen's book Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Dress in Eighth- to Twelfth-Century Painting (New York: Palgrave 2005).

A conversation with Hartmut Leppin (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main) about how one could be a Roman in Syriac, focusing on the sixth-century author John of Ephesos, otherwise known as Yuhannan from Amida. If one could be Roman in Greek (which is what we call "Byzantium"), why not also in Syriac? The discussion is based on Hartmut's study of "The Roman Empire in John of Ephesus' Church History: Being Roman, Writing Syriac," in P. Van Nuffelen, ed., Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity(Cambridge University Press 2019) 113-135.

A conversation with Adam Goldwyn (North Dakota State University) about first-person narratives whose protagonists experience foreign conquest, captivity, enslavement, degradation, humiliation, and loss of rights. It is based on his recent book Witness Literature in Byzantium: Narrating Slaves, Prisoners, and Refugees (Palgrave MacMillan 2021), which uses comparisons to the literature of the Holocaust and the Atlantic slave trade to illuminate the insights of Byzantine texts that represent similar personal experiences. Can Byzantine literature speak powerfully to these transhistorical traumas? How can we activate it to do so?

A conversation with Polymnia Athanassiadi (University of Athens) about the way of life that ended in late antiquity. Scholars of Byzantium and the Middle Ages may see this as a period of new beginnings, but Polymnia doesn't want us to forget the practices and urban values that came to an end during it. The conversation touches on issues raised throughout her papers collected in Mutations of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Variorum Ashgate 2015), as well as the concept of "monodoxy" explored in Vers la pensée unique: La montée de l'intolerance dans l'Antiquité tardive (Les Belles Lettres 2010).

A conversation with Elena Boeck (DePaul University) about her recent book The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople: The Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument (Cambridge University Press 2021). Though it is often overlooked today, Justinian's column and colossal statue, which stood for a thousand years next to Hagia Sophia, defined the City almost as much as the Great Church itself. We talk about the symbolism, history, and the engineering of this monument.

A conversation with Roderick Beaton (King's College London, emeritus) on his new book The Greeks: A Global History (Basic Books 2021). We discuss different ways to define who "the Greeks" were and are (in Byzantium Graikos meant a "Greek-speaker"); the diversity of groups that make up this story; how Byzantium can be featured in a diachronic history of Greek-speakers without being overlooked in favor of the ancients and moderns (as tends often to happen); and what might tie these Greeks together in a way that doesn't quite work for, say, "the English-speaking peoples."

A conversation with Mirela Ivanova (University of Sheffield) on the creation of the Slavonic alphabet and the lives of its creators, the Byzantine missionaries Constantine-Cyril and Methodios. Despite the huge importance attributed to these men and their activities in modern scholarship, national narratives, and Slavic Orthodox identity, our knowledge about them rests largely on two texts whose interests are quite different from our own. What do we really know about them? The conversation is based on two of Mirela's articles, 'Re-thinking the Life of Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher,' Slavonic and East European Review 98 (2020) 434-463; and 'Inventing and Ethnicising Slavonic in the Long Ninth Century,' forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval History (2021).

We know so much about the Byzantines, and yet really so little. If we had the chance to meet and debrief one person from that world, who would it be? Join me in conversation with Paroma Chatterjee (University of Michigan) and Merle Eisenberg (National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland), as we wrestle with that question. Who might answer the burning questions that we have? Who would alert us to questions that we aren't asking because we are used to the limitations of our sources? How would we choose our questions? Our choices are, yet again, strikingly different.

A conversation with Lynn Jones (Florida State University) on how fragments of the True Cross were requested, gifted, traveled, repatriated, abducted, and returned in the early Byzantine period; how they were used to validate rival claims to power; and the anxiety caused by doubts over their authenticity. The conversation is based on a number of Lynn's publications, especially 'Perceptions of Byzantium: Radegund of Poitiers and Relics of the True Cross,' in L. Jones, ed., Byzantine Images and their Afterlives: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr (Ashgate 2014) 105-125.

A conversation with Sean Anthony (Ohio State University) about the earliest sources for the life of the Prophet Muhammad, including the Quran, papyri, inscriptions, and Christian sources of the seventh century, and how Muslims were initially perceived by the Romans of the eastern provinces. The conversation is based on Sean's book Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam (University of California Press 2020).

A conversation with Daniëlle Slootjes (University of Amsterdam) on the behavior of crowds in late antique Rome and Constantinople, based on her chapter "Crowd Behavior in Late Antique Rome," in the edited volume Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century (Cambridge 2015) 178-194. As our own political world is increasingly revolving around mass protests, it is time to revisit what we know about the dynamics of crowds in imperial Roman cities, whether they acted for or against the regime of the day. Check out also the volume that Daniëlle co-edited with Erika Manders, Leadership, Ideology, and Crowds in the Roman Empire of the Fourth Century (Stuttgart 2019).

A conversation with Marc Lauxtermann (University of Oxford) on how to read Byzantine poetry on its own terms and in its own context. We talk about how modern Romantic notions of poetry as well as the ancient meters of classical Greek have distorted the expectations that we place on Byzantine poetry, and then discuss the specific contexts that gave rise to poetry in Byzantine society. Who were the poets? How did poems accompany objects and events? The conversation is based on Marc's magisterial and highly recommended Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres: Texts and Contexts, 2 volumes (Vienna 2003 and 2019).

We know so much about Byzantium, and yet really so little. If we had the chance to meet and debrief one person who had experienced some part of it first-hand, who would it be? Join me in a conversation with Fotini Kondyli (University of Virginia) and Alexander Sarantis (University of Warsaw), which wrestles with that question. What person would answer the burning questions that we have? Who would alert us to questions that we aren't asking because we are used to the limitations of our sources? How would we choose our questions? Our answers are strikingly different.

A conversation with Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University) about the history and ritual functions of Egyptian obelisks, from ancient Egypt down to Rome, Constantinople, and beyond. What do obelisks mean to say and how do they function in their architectural settings, especially in the hippodrome of Constantinople? How do they project imperial ideologies? The discussion is based on Cecily's study of 'Imperial Monumentalism, Ceremony, and Forms of Pageantry: The Inter-Imperial Obelisk in Istanbul,' in The Oxford World History of Empire, v. 1: The Imperial Experience (Oxford University Press, 2021) 223-265.

A conversation with Alexander Lingas (City University of London) on the debates surrounding the reconstruction of Byzantine music. We discuss the common origins of western and eastern Christian traditions, when they parted ways, and how both traditions passed through phases of reinvention. Why does the modern performance of Gregorian Chant sound so different from Byzantine chant? As the director of the vocal ensemble Capella Romana, Alexander comes at this question from both a performance and a research angle. His publications include 'Medieval Byzantine Chant and the Sound of Orthodoxy,' in the volume Byzantine Orthodoxies (Ashgate 2006) 131-150, and 'Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant,' Acta Musicae Byzantinae 6 (2003) 56-76. Stay tuned at the end for a recording of an imperial acclamation for John VIII Palaiologos.

A conversation with Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (Dumbarton Oaks, Museum Department) on how people in Byzantium experienced the materiality of the objects they used, especially jewelry and textiles. We look at some of those objects together, discuss their qualities, and situate our engagement with material culture in broader discussions of historical theory. You can see the objects that we discuss for yourself, including this earring and ring pair; a St. Demetrios reliquary; a child's tunic; and a garment with a clavus. The conversation is based partly on Betsy's study 'Appealing to the Senses: Experiencing Adornment in the Early Medieval Eastern Mediterranean,' in the volume Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts (Berlin 2019) 77-96; and the textile exhibition Woven Interiors: Furnishing Early Medieval Egypt (The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, 2019).

A conversation with Alexander Sarantis (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz) on the socio-economic impact of raiding on the lives of provincials as well as the military history of the empire and its finances. Who were these raiders? What did they want? How did provincials and the empire as a whole respond to them? A fear of marauders probably doesn't keep you up at night today, but this was a major anxiety in Byzantine life. The conversation is based on Alexander's study 'The Socio-Economic Impact of Raiding on the Eastern and Balkan Borderlands of the Eastern Roman Empire, 502-602,' Millennium 17 (2020) 203-264.

A conversation with Tamar Hodos (University of Bristol) on how the application of market logic to humanities research and teaching is driving up tuition costs for students and their families, making good academic positions scarcer, and eroding the institution of tenure, which protects the integrity of research and teaching. In this environment, smaller academic fields face the prospect of extinction. Our focus is on public universities in the US and UK and we discuss funding structures and the underlying logic of our administrative practices.

A wide-ranging conversation with Merle Eisenberg (National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland) on the opportunities created for historians by media, old and new, to disseminate our ideas to the public. Among other things, I learned what a "press release" is and how it works, as well as how historians and scientists work differently with the press. Should we bring scholarly debates to the broader public? What do we lose when we craft a good story in order to do so successfully? We also talk about our pet peeves in films that tell a good story but get the facts so infuriatingly wrong.

A conversation with Leonora Neville (University of Wisconsin) on whether the scholarly rubric "Byzantium" does more harm than good. How did it come into being? What biases and ideologies, especially in the domain of gender, does it encode? What blind-spots and distortions does it create? We discuss whether "Byzantium" enables a Eurocentric western-oriented narrative about Greece, Rome, Europe, and the Renaissance that does not want to recognize classically educated, Greek-speaking, Orthodox Romans in the east.

A conversation with Troy Goodfellow (Paradox Interactive) on how Byzantium and other premodern civilizations are represented in video games, and how the mechanics of the games structure those representations, player's goals, and the dynamics of historical change. Thanks to Marion Kruse for joining the conversation and to all of you listeners who sent advice and helpful links. Your comments indicate how important this area is to so many of you (and yet still so understudied!).

A conversation with Judith Herrin (King's College London) about the fascinating history of Ravenna between 400 and 800 AD. In this period, the city functioned first as a court of the western emperor, then as the seat of a Gothic kingdom loosely subordinate to Constantinople, and as the capital of the exarchate, the Italian province of the eastern empire. This made Ravenna a place of remarkable cultural fusion, and endowed it with spectacular monuments featuring superb mosaics. The conversation is based on Judith Herrin's recent book Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Princeton University Press 2020).

Not an interview this time, but an anthology of Byzantine tales of horror. Learn about foul murders, demonic visitations, the undead, and the criminally insane; also, the Byzantine science of demonology and the spirit world. Many thanks to all the colleagues and friends who read the stories, in tones spooky, clinical, or ironic! The stories are: "Questions for a woman who killed and ate her mother and daughter"; "Incisive curiosity"; "Desire of the flesh"; "The mummy"; "The murderer who gave himself up"; "Drawn and quartered"; "Wrong address"; "Erinyes of the sea"; "Three Blind Men"; "Taken"; "Possessorix"; "Baboutzikarios"; "Gello"; "Second chance"; "Calling a witness"; and "Killing baby Hitler."

A conversation with Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks) on the experience of communal monastic life in Byzantium, ranging from its organization and rules to its religious goals, engagement with society, and differences between monasteries for men and women. It is based on Alice-Mary's recent book Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800-1453 (University of Notre Dame Press 2019), which discusses solitary ascetics too.

A conversation with Dave Jenkins (Princeton University Library) about how we read (and how to enjoy) Byzantine literature, from digitized manuscripts and online databases to the pleasures of Byzantine prose. Dave is a philosopher, a philologist, and a librarian. You may also know him as the creator of a database of translations of Byzantine texts in modern languages and a database of digitized manuscripts.

A conversation with Chryssa Bourbou (Hellenic Ministry of Culture) on what we learn from health and society in Byzantium from the study of skeletal remains. What infectious conditions or effects of accidents can we detect? What can we learn about the lives of children (apart, grimly, from the fact that they were all too often short)? How are human remains handled? The conversation is based on Chryssa's many publications, including Health and Disease in Byzantine Crete (7th-12th Centuries AD) (Ashgate 2010).

A conversation with Noel Lenski (Yale University) on "slave societies" and how the institution of slavery changed in late antiquity and Byzantium. Were tasks performed by slaves in antiquity carried out by free people in late antiquity? What were the experiences of Byzantines who were themselves captured in raids and taken outside the empire? The conversation draws on many of Noel's publications, including 'Framing the Question: What is a Slave Society?,' in N. Lenski and C. Cameron, eds. What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2018) 15-57; 'Searching for Slave Teachers in Late Antiquity,' Révue des études tardo-antiques 12, suppl. 8 (2018-2019) 127-191; 'Captivity and Slavery among the Saracens in Late Antiquity (ca. 250 - 630 CE),' Antiquité tardive 19 (2011) 237-266; and others (see here for more).

A conversation with Spyros Theocharis and Chrysa Sakel, artists and creators of a graphic novel about a tenth-century Byzantine empress, Theophano: A Byzantine Tale. We talk about the period, characters, and creative choices, and how works in popular media can help to foster a new and richer image of Byzantium.

A conversation with Amy Kaufman and Paul Sturtevant about their book The Devil's Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past (University of Toronto Press 2020). Extremists groups such as white supremacists and ISIS use the Middle Ages to advocate for specific racial, religious, or gender orders, and promote violence as a means for attaining them. We talk about the contours and goals of these groups, their conflicted views of modernity and the Middle Ages, how Byzantium does or does not fit into this picture, and generally go off on many tangents. Also check out their complementary conversation with Danièle Cybulskie on The Medieval Podcast.

This conversation with Brian Swain (Kennesaw State University) takes on listener questions about Byzantine identities. We start with the history of scholarly discussions of identity, especially ethnicity, comparing the study of barbarian (i.e., Germanic) ethnic groups with those in the Byzantine empire. How do groups change their identities? How are new identities born and old ones lost? How did the ancient Greeks become Romans and when did that become an ethnic identity? Where does genealogy and biology fit into all this? What happened to the Romans of the west? What did the Byzantines call their state and language? What does modern Romania have to do with Byzantine Romanía? And more!

Meet Anastasius the Librarian, one of the most fascinating controversialists of the ninth century. A native of Rome, scholar of Greek, and (probably) anti-pope for all of three days, he was no friend of Byzantium. He disliked and mistrusted "the Greeks" and argued that they were not Romans as they thought. His arguments have held sway in the west ever since. My guest is Réka Forrai (University of Southern Denmark), an expert on Anastasius' writings and thought; see especially her fascinating study ‘The Sacred Nectar of the Deceitful Greeks: Perceptions of Greekness in Ninth Century Rome,’ in A. Speer and P. Steinkrüger, eds., Knotenpunkt Byzanz: Wissensformen und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen (Berlin 2012) 71-84.

China and Byzantium both saw themselves as civilizations menaced by "barbarians," and periodically established empires that ruled over them. In this episode, Ying Zhang (Ohio State, an expert on Ming China) moderates a discussion between myself and Shao-yun Yang (Denison University), author of The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China (University of Washington Press, 2019). How do imperial societies talk about barbarian or ethnic groups? How might we identify those groups, when they are used so often in the rhetorical construction of Chinese / Roman "orthodox" identities? Can our two fields find a common language in which to discuss these questions? My heartfelt gratitude to Shao-yun and Ying: you have been wonderful guides for your fascinating fields.

Where and how does one experience Byzantium in modern Greece today? This conversation with Dimitris Krallis (Simon Fraser University: see episode 10) ranges widely, from statues and streets to politics and Church politics in particular, drawing on our own experiences and training as Byzantinists. There is a lot more that we could say about this fascinating topic, but we explore various domains where Byzantium is alive or long gone, or where it shambles on in zombie form.

Hagia Sophia is back in the news. To understand what is happening, we need to know the complex history of this building as a church, mosque, and museum, and the many parties that have sought to claim it. In this episode, Bob Ousterhout (University of Pennsylvania) illuminates this rich history, with a focus on the last century and a half, the current political forces, and the priority to preserve the history of the monument for all who wish to study and experience it. He is the author of the magisterial survey Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands (Oxford 2019), and an article on the topic at hand: 'From Hagia Sophia to Ayasofya: Architecture and the Persistence of Memory,' İstanbul Araştırmaları Yıllığı 2 (2013) 1-8, which is available here. [Sidenote: you may want to check out my recent podcast interviews on The Medieval Podcast and the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Podcast.]

A conversation with Tia Kolbaba (Rutgers University) about how we decide what questions need to be studied, how we identify blind-spots and misconceptions, reframe a problem, and navigate the shallows and the deep in order to bring a project to conclusion. Are there politics within a field that shape these decisions, sensitive areas that we need to avoid, or responsibilities toward non-academic communities?

A conversation with Jonathan Shea (Dumbarton Oaks) about Byzantine lead seals, of which we have some 70,000, and about the work and careers of Byzantine civilian bureaucrats. Seals are the hidden treasury of research on Byzantium: so small and yet, in large numbers, they allow us to do so much, and they bring us closer to the individuals who used them. The conversation is based on his recent book Politics and Government in Byzantium: The Rise and Fall of the Bureaucrats (Bloomsbury 2020).

How did the Byzantines read Homer? How did classical studies work in Byzantium? A conversation with Baukje van den Berg (Central European University) on where, why, and how the Byzantines approached the Iliad and the Odyssey; what scholarly tools they had and developed for that purpose; and on one of the great Homerists of all time, Eustathios of Thessalonike. The conversation is based on Baukje's forthcoming book, Homer and Rhetoric in Byzantium: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad (Oxford University Press).

A conversation with Christian Laes (University of Manchester) on how to study disability in Byzantium. What might count as a disability in a Byzantine context? What social consequences did it have? How was it represented in texts? How did people try to cope with their disabilities? The conversation is based on a number of his publications, including 'Power, Infirmity, and "Disability": Five Case-Stories on Byzantine Emperors and their Impairments,' Byzantinoslavica 77 (2019) 211-229; and 'How does one do the history of disability in antiquity? One thousand years of case-studies,' Medicina nei Secoli 23 (2011) 915-946.

A conversation with Efi Ragia (Hellenic Open University) on coming to grips with social class in Byzantium, a society without a fixed social hierarchy, at least not fixed in terms of hereditary groups. Claims to high (or low) social standing were often rhetorical and fluid. Who were "the powerful"? By what criteria could they be recognized, and how might others aspire to that position? The conversation is based on her article ‘Social Group Profiles in Byzantium: Some Considerations on Byzantine Perceptions about Social Class Distinctions,’ Byzantina Symmeikta 26 (2016) 309-372.

A conversation about digital humanities in Byzantine research, with Kuba Kabala (Davidson College). How did digital humanities emerge from traditional (analog) modes of research? What new approaches do they enable? What new findings do they make possible?

What did it take, and what did it do to you, to avoid the company of others in Byzantium? How far did you have to pare your life down, and how reliant were you still on networks of support and supply? A conversation with Ellen Muehlberger (University of Michigan: see episode 2) and David Brakke (Ohio State University: see episode 13) about trying to live alone in early Byzantium. We focus on ascetics, but not only on them.

A conversation with Tina Sessa (Ohio State University: see episode 4) and Kyle Harper (University of Oklahoma, author of The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, Princeton University Press 2017) on the Byzantine reactions to pandemics. What was the threshold of social visibility for a pandemic anyway? What could the government do to help? What imaginative and social resources were activated in times of pandemic?

A conversation with Jennifer Davis (Catholic University of America) on the study of empire in a medieval context, contrasting the different ways in which Charlemagne and the Byzantine emperors ran theirs. What do we mean by empire after all? The discussion is based on her book Charlemagne's Practice of Empire (Cambridge 2015). 

A conversation with Buket Kitapçı Bayrı (Koç University) about Turkish films that prominently feature Byzantine characters and settings, especially the films about Battal Gazi. For links to these films, see the Textual Appendices to the podcast's host platform: https://byzantiumandfriends.podbean.com (on the right). For Buket's work in this area, see her articles 'Contemporary Perception of Byzantium in Turkish Cinema: The Cross-Examination of Battal Gazi Films with the Battalname,' Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 37 (2013) 81-91; and 'The 10th International Congress of Byzantines Studies, Istanbul, September 15-21, 1955,' Yillik: Annual of Istanbul Studies 1 (2019) 123-144.

A conversation with Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University) about the coping strategies that late Byzantium used to counter, ameliorate, and reverse its imperial decline. We talk about the concepts of decline and soft power, and how art, literature, scholarship, and religious identity were deployed strategically to win over potential allies and disseminate a prestige Byzantine "brand." The conversation is based on her book Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline (Cambridge University Press 2014).

A conversation with Garth Fowden (University of Cambridge) about how the peoples of the Caucasus (Armenians, Georgians, and Albanians) coped with living between two empires, how those empires sought to intervene in their region, and the cultural and religious changes that took place there during the first half of the first millennium. This episode demonstrates the illuminating ways in which global and regional history can be combined.

A conversation with Elizabeth Key Fowden (University of Cambridge) on the Parthenon mosque and Athens under the Ottomans. When the Parthenon was done being a Christian church (which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century), it became a mosque, but little has been written about that phase of its history. Fascinating new sources are now coming to light. Elizabeth is writing a book on the topic; for now, see her articles 'The Parthenon, Pericles and King Solomon: A Case Study of Ottoman Archaeological Imagination in Greece,'Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies42 (2018) 261-274; and 'The Parthenon Mosque, King Solomon, and the Greek Sages,' in Ottoman Athens: Archaeology, Topography, History (Athens 2019) 67-95.

A conversation with Marion Kruse (University of Cincinnati) about his book The Politics of Roman Memory: From the Fall of the Western Empire to the Age of Justinian (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019). By what standards can anyone say that Roman history ends at some point and Byzantine history begins? Or is Byzantine history rather a phase of Roman history (namely, by far the longest one)? How did eastern authors, including Justinian, who lived in the aftermath of the end of empire in the West (476 AD), understand their place in the long trajectory of Roman history? And how do these labels function politically, for them and for us?

A conversation with Stephen Morris (independent scholar) about the attitudes toward (male) homosexuality in different sites of Byzantine culture and the prospects for an orthodox recognition of same-sex marriages, based on his book “When Brothers Dwell in Unity”: Byzantine Christianity and Homosexuality (McFarland & Company 2016).

A conversation with Sofia Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago) and David Brakke (The Ohio State University) about Coptic Egypt, the life and works of Shenute the Great, and how Coptic and Byzantine Studies can talk more with each other, just as the people they study talked to each other in the fourth-seventh centuries. For some of Shenute's works, see the Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great: Community, Theology, and Social Conflict in Late Antique Egypt, translated by David Brakke and Andrew Crislip (Cambridge University Press 2015). For linguistic contacts, see Sofia Torallas Tovar, 'The Reverse Case: Egyptian Borrowing in Greek,' in Greek Influence on Egyptian-Coptic: Contact-Induced Change in an Ancient African Language (Hamburg 2017) 97-113.

A conversation with Siren Çelik (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University) about the new generation of Turkish Byzantine scholars, and the paths by which one might come to study Byzantium in Turkey and beyond.

A conversation with Steven Smith (Hofstra University) about worldly and sinful epigrams from the sixth century that talk about love, sex, food, and other pleasures, based on his book Greek Epigram and Byzantine Culture: Gender, Desire, and Denial in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge University Press 2019). For a translation of a sample of these epigrams, see https://byzantiumandfriends.podbean.com/p/byzantine-erotic-epigrams-of-the-sixth-century/.

Could one rise from a provincial town to a position of power and wealth in the capital without having a military career? How did Byzantine men of affairs in the eleventh century invest their new-found wealth and create networks of exchange internal to their estates? What was the role of the state in buttressing these "self-made" men? A conversation with Dimitris Krallis (Simon Fraser University), based on his book Serving Byzantium’s Emperors: The Courtly Life and Career of Michael Attaleiates (Palgrave MacMillan 2019).

A conversation with Paroma Chatterjee (University of Michigan) on Indian perspectives and approaches to Byzantium. What we might be taking for granted in a field whose appeal has been traditionally limited to Europe and its offshoots? What might a global (as opposed to "ecumenical") Byzantium look like? This is the first in what I hope will be a number of conversations.

A conversation with Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford University) about the sensory and spiritual experience of Hagia Sophia, where architecture, sound, and light met theology and prayer, based on her book Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press 2017). For the associated video, go to https://vimeo.com/365102931 (password: HS2018).

A conversation with Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University) about the kingdom (yes, the kingdom) of Rus' and our concept of "medieval Europe," its potential and current limitations, based on his book The Kingdom of Rus' (ARC Humanities Press 2017).

A conversation about Armenian art, ancient and Christian, with Christina Maranci (Tufts University), based on her book The Art of Armenia: An Introduction (Oxford University Press 2018).

A conversation about western fantasies, orientalism, and the making of Byzantium, with Elena Boeck (DePaul University), based on her two articles: 'Fantasy, Supremacy, Domes, and Dames: Charlemagne goes to Constantinople (in the volume Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean: History and Heritage, 2019, 142-161), and 'Archaeology of Decadence: Uncovering Byzantium in Victorien Sardou's Theodora (in the volume Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity, 2015, 102-132).

A conversation about the new environmental history of late antiquity with Kristina Sessa (The Ohio State University), based on her article 'The New Environmental Fall of Rome: A Methodological Consideration,' Journal of Late Antiquity 12.1 (2019) 211-255.

A conversation about the Fourth Crusade and colonial / postcolonial theory with George Demacopoulos (Fordham University), based on his book Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade (Fordham University Press 2019).

A conversation about death and the imagination with Ellen Muehlberger (University of Michigan), based on her book Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and its Consequences in Late Antique Christianity (Oxford University Press 2019).

A conversation about Byzantine gender with Leonora Neville (University of Wisconsin), based on her book Byzantine Gender (ARC Humanities Press 2019).