ICMA VIEWPOINTS BOOK LAUNCH
IS BYZANTINE STUDIES A COLONIALIST DISCIPLINE? TOWARD A CRITICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
EDITED BY BENJAMIN ANDERSON AND MIRELA IVANOVA
FRIDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2023
12PM ET, ONLINE
REGISTER HERE
We are delighted to invite you to a virtual event celebrating the publication of the second volume of the ICMA Viewpoints book series, sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art and Penn State University Press! Please join us!
WITH
BENJAMIN ANDERSON • MIRELA IVANOVA • ROLAND BETANCOURT • ELEANOR GOODMAN • NICHOLAS S. M. MATHEOU • ELIZABETH DOSPĚL WILLIAMS • ALEXANDRA VUKOVICH
Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this question, this book defines the parameters of the debate and proposes ways of thinking about what it would mean to engage seriously with the field’s political and intellectual genealogies, hierarchies, and forms of exclusion.
In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, among the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism. Starting with the premise that Byzantium and the field of Byzantine studies are 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. The book concludes with a bibliography that serves as a foundation for a coherent and systematic critical historiography. Bringing together insights from scholars working in different disciplines, regions, and institutions, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? urges practitioners to reckon with the discipline’s colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist history.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Andrea Myers Achi, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Bahattin Bayram, Averil Cameron, Stephanie R. Caruso, Şebnem Dönbekci, Hugh G. Jeffery, Anthony Kaldellis, Matthew Kinloch, Nicholas S. M. Matheou, Maria Mavroudi, Zeynep Olgun, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Jake Ransohoff, Alexandra Vukovich, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Arielle Winnik.