Book Launch: Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography, Cornell University, 7 March 2023 12:00-1:30 PM

Book Launch

Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography

Physical Sciences Building, 401 (245 East Avenue), Cornell University

7 March 2023 12:00 - 1:30 PM

Benjamin Anderson (Cornell) and Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield) will discuss their edited volume, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography, forthcoming this summer from Penn State University Press. In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, between the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism. Starting with the premise that the Byzantine Empire and the field of Byzantine Studies are both simultaneously colonial and colonized, the chapters address topics ranging from the material basis of philological scholarship and its uses in modern politics to the colonial plunder of art and its consequences for curatorial practice in the present. 

Editor bios:

Benjamin Anderson is Associate Professor of the History of Art and Classics at Cornell University.

Mirela Ivanova is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield.

The event is funded under a collaborative research grant from the Society for the Humanities. Co-sponsored by Medieval Studies, History of Art, and Classics

For more information: https://events.cornell.edu/event/book_launch_is_byzantine_studies_a_colonialist_discipline_toward_a_critical_historiography