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 so...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min
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 Beli...
Jan 20, 2022•1 hr 5 min
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-Centur...
Jan 06, 2022•58 min
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 ...
Dec 23, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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 simila...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 5 min
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...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 4 min
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....
Nov 11, 2021•1 hr
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...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 13 min
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 bas...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min
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 ou...
Jul 29, 2021•1 hr 16 min
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 the...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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).
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 13 min
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 ...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 2 min
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 a...
Jun 03, 2021•59 min
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? H...
May 20, 2021•1 hr 11 min
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,' i...
May 06, 2021•58 min
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 ...
Apr 22, 2021•1 hr
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 ...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 45
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...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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 u...
Mar 11, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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 succes...
Feb 25, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 44
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 Roma...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 13 min
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!).
Jan 28, 2021•1 hr 18 min
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 i...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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 him...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 28 min
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.
Dec 17, 2020•1 hr 6 min
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....
Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 7 min
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) (As...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 43
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 i...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 42
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....
Oct 22, 2020•48 min•Ep. 41
