Byzantium & Friends

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).