The 43rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies
Byzantium Behind the Scenes: Power and Subversion
University of Birmingham
27-29 March 2010
The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, of the University of Birmingham is pleased to be welcoming back the Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies under the auspices of The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.
The 43rd Spring Symposium explores the multiple ways in which Byzantine artists, rhetoricians, philosophers, theologians, satirists and political actors subverted and manipulated established rules and traditions. Through interdisciplinary dialogue the symposium aims to either qualify or challenge common held perceptions of Byzantium and the Byzantines. The symposium will consist of eighteen main papers as well as more numerous communications which are wide open to any theme in Byzantine studies. The call for communications expires on 7 February 2010.
Prospective participants and guests are kindly invited to register from now until the opening of the symposium on Saturday, March 27, 2010. You can also register online.
Symposiarch: Dimiter Angelov
Symposium Assistants: Eve Davies, Michael Saxby
Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies
Rhoads Murphey
Rhoads Murphey
With:
Introduction
The 43rd Byzantine Spring Symposium addresses a theme of special significance for the field of Byzantine studies. Byzantium has traditionally been deemed a civilisation which deferred to authority and set special store by orthodoxy, canon and proper order. Since 1982 when the distinguished Russian Byzantinist Alexander Kazhdan wrote that 'the history of Byzantine intellectual opposition has yet to be written', scholars have increasingly highlighted cases of opposition to and subversion of 'correct practice' and 'correct belief' in Byzantium. The innovative scholarly effort has produced important results, although has been somewhat disjointed and has been hampered by the lack of dialogue across the disciplines of Byzantine studies. The Byzantine Spring Symposium in 2010 addresses this situation by drawing together historians, art historians, scholars of literature and religion, and philosophers who will discuss shared and discipline-specific approaches to the theme of subversion.The main papers of the symposium are organised in the form of five sessions devoted to:
1) History
2) Art history
3) Religious and popular belief
4) Philosophy and intellectual life
5) Literature
The dialectical relationship between authority and subversion, and the distinction between dissidence and subversion, are among the theoretical questions to be addressed. The conference comes at a timely junction of the development of Byzantine studies, as interest in subversion and generally in nonconformist attitudes has been rising steadily in various disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.
PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME
SATURDAY MARCH 27
Session I: The politics of subversion- Dimitris Kyritses (Crete)
Decision-making, consensus-building and autocracy held in check: the imperial council in Byzantium
- Kostis Smyrlis (New York)
The Byzantine state and the subversive power of fiscally privileged groups (13th-14th c.)
- Michael Angold (Edinburgh)
The art of subversion at the late Palaiologan court
- Cécile Morrisson (Dumbarton Oaks) and Vasso Penna (University of Peloponnese)
Usurpers and rebels in Byzantium: image and message through coins
- Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham)
Seeing is believing, but words tell many lies: image, text and subversion in Byzantium
- Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford)
Subverting the Byzantine world: Sinai, crusader art, and the rise of optical visuality
- Liz James (Sussex)
The world turned upside down': art and subversion in Byzantium
Session III: Subversion in religious and popular belief
- Neil McLynn (Oxford)
Playing to lose? The politics of heresy in Theodosian Constantinople
- Paul Magdalino (St Andrews)
Generic subversion? The political message of apocalyptic prophecy and urban myth
- Dirk Krausmüller (Cardiff)
Hiding in plain sight: heterodox readings of Byzantine theological texts
- Béatrice Caseau (Paris)
The limits of religion: derision and disrespect
- Börje Bydén (Stockholm)
'No prince of perfection': Byzantine anti-Aristotelianism from Philoponus to Plethon
- Katerina Ierodiakonu (Athens)
Really, why was John Italos anathematised?
- Maria Mavroudi (Berkeley)
George Gemistos Plethon in the Islamic world
MONDAY MARCH 29
Session V: The literature of subversion- Margaret Mullett (Dumbarton Oaks)
How to criticise the laudandus
- Dimitris Krallis (Simon Fraser University)
Harmless satire, stinging critique: a new reading the Timarion
- Przemysław Marciniak (University of Silesia)
Of mice and people: Katomyomachia and Dramation as satirical texts
Margaret Alexiou (Harvard)
Of broth, brawls and balls: power, pain and poverty in Ptochoprodromos
Source and more: http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/news/conferences/index.shtml
