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Byzantium & Friends

Byzantium & Friends

Conversations with experts in the history of Byzantium and surrounding fields, hosted by Anthony Kaldellis.

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All Episodes

01:02:36

88. Women’s labor, with Anna Kelley

Byzantium & Friends ·

2023/02/23

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

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57:39

87. Dragons! with Scott Bruce

Byzantium & Friends ·

2023/02/09

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.

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01:01:14

86. How to organize a museum exhibition – and bring...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2023/01/26

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

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55:23

85. Lead mining and lead pollution in the Roman...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2023/01/12

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).

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01:28:50

84. On writing narrative history, with guest-host...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/12/29

In this end-of-the-year episode, guest host Marion Kruse (University of Cincinnati) interviews me about writing narrative history. Why and how should we write narrative histories? What do they accomplish in the overall economy of the scholarly production of knowledge? What pitfalls did I identify in writing my new history of Byzantium, and how did I try to avoid falling into them? (Apologies for the self-indulgent length of this episode. I was too busy talking and didn't keep good track of the

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01:06:14

83. Blinding as punishment and enforced disability,...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/12/15

A conversation with Jake Ransohoff (Simon Fraser University) on the practice of blinding in Byzantium. Why and how was it done? Why was it more prominent in some periods rather than in others? And how did its victims cope with this disability that the state had imposed on them for (usually) crimes of treason? The conversation is based on Jake's dissertation (Sightless Eyes, Broken Bodies: Blinding, Punishment, and the Politics of Disability in the Byzantine World, Harvard University, 2022).

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01:03:10

82. What was First Iconoclasm about?, with Leslie...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/12/01

A conversation with Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham) on the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm (ca. 730 to 787 AD). What was the problem with religious icons? What did the "Isaurian" emperors Leon III and Konstantinos V try to do about it, and why? A great deal of what we used to know, largely by following pro-icon sources, has come undone in the latest research. Where we stand now has been lucidly presented by Leslie in her Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (Bristol Classical Press

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54:35

81. Surviving the Mongol storm, with Nicholas Morton

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/11/17

A conversation with Nicholas Morton (Nottingham Trent University) about the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century, the terror that they inspired, and the strategies by which its targets tried to survive them. What did the Mongols think they were doing and how did the Byzantines use diplomacy to deflect the danger and even use it to their advantage? The conversation is based on Nic's just-released book The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (Basic Books

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01:03:49

80. Diagrams: from sundials to the schematics of the...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/11/03

A conversation with Linda Safran (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto) on the hitherto-unexplored world of Byzantine diagrams. We talk about maps, sundials, and more abstract representations of the world and even God. The conversation is based on Linda's papers in a volume she co-edited, The Diagram as Paradigm: Cross-Cultural Approaches (Dumbarton Oaks 2022), as well as "A Prolegomenon to Byzantine Diagrams,” in the edited volume The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early

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51:51

79. The enduring power of ancient statues in...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/10/21

A conversation with Paroma Chatterjee (University of Michigan) on the power that ancient statues still had in Orthodox Constantinople. In many contexts, they were more prominent than icons. We talk about some of their functions, but also why Byzantine art history is so focused on icons, which were secluded objects, in comparison. The conversation is based on Paroma's recent book Between the Pagan Past and Christian Present in Byzantine Visual Culture: Statues in Constantinople, 4th-13th Centuries CE

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01:15:42

78. How to be philanthropic in early Byzantine...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/08/18

A conversation with Dan Caner (Indiana University) about the different kinds of charitable giving in early Byzantium. We talk about the pre-Christian background, the role of institutions, and views about wealth. Was giving primarily good for the soul of the giver, and under what conditions, or for the material assistance of the needy? How could one give to ascetics, who had renounced such needs? The conversation is based on Dan's recent book The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of

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01:10:20

77. How did most people in the Roman empire get by?...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/08/04

A conversation with Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) about production and consumption in the Roman world, especially by the 90% of the population who are less represented in our literary sources. How did they get by from day to day? What alternatives does the evidence suggest to the "subsistence" model that many ancient historians have used? The conversation is based on a paper on "Household Economics in the Roman Empire and Early Christianity," forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Biblical

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01:05:52

76. Exploring the monuments of Byzantine...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/07/21

A conversation with Sergey Ivanov (Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Munich; corresponding member of the British Academy) on the monuments, buildings, and ruins of the Byzantine phase of the City's history. We talk about how to explore them, how to access their history, and even get a feel for the lingering presence of the events that took place in them. We ponder what has been lost and what might yet be found. The conversation is based on Sergey's recent book In Search of

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01:05:06

75. The politics of archaeological heritage and...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/07/07

A conversation with Jonathan Hall (University of Chicago) about how the archaeological past of the city of Argos was reclaimed in the long nineteenth century. What institutions and political debates took shape around the heritage of the past? What role did the ancient travel writer Pausanias play in defining what the past was? What was the interplay between local, national, international, and imperial interests? The conversation is based on Jonathan's book Reclaiming the Past: Argos and its

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01:05:46

74. Laments for the Fall: Constantinople and...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/06/23

A conversation with Eleni Kefala (University of St. Andrews) on the fall of two empires, the Byzantine and the Aztec. What role did these momentous events play in the emerging identity of western Europe? And how were they experienced by the Romaioi and the native Mexica, especially through the laments that they wrote and sang about these events? The conversation is based on Eleni's book The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,

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51:30

73. When did women “bind up” their hair, and why?,...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/06/09

A conversation with Gabriel Radle (University of Notre Dame) on the question of why and when adolescent girls or women "bound up" their hair. Which women did so, and under what circumstances? What kind of headgear was involved? And how did the Byzantine practice compare with that in other societies, ancient and medieval? Our discussion is based on Gabriel's article 'The Veiling of Women in Byzantium: Liturgy, Hair, and Identity in a Medieval Rite of Passage,' Speculum 94 (2019) 1070-1115.

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01:00:38

72. What do we mean by “Byzantine literature”?, with...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/05/26

A conversation with Stratis Papaioannou (University of Crete) about the mismatch between modern ideas of literature (on the one hand) and the texts, conventions, and goals of Byzantine authors (on the other). In what sense are those texts "literature"? Should they be compared to classical texts, modern literature, neither, or both? We talk also about how much of it has survived, and how much might have been lost. The conversation was prompted by the release of Stratis' edited volume,The Oxford

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59:24

71. Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425) had a lot to...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/05/12

A conversation with Siren Çelik (Marmara University) about the many personas that the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos crafted for himself in his surviving works. In fact, we have more writings from him -- in many genres, and many of a personal nature -- than from any prior Roman emperor. What was he hoping to accomplish and why is he worth reading? The conversation is based on Siren's recent book, Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult (Cambridge University Press

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01:01:24

70. Trees have histories too, with Alexander Olson

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/04/28

A conversation with Alexander Olson (independent scholar, British Columbia, Canada) about the secret lives of olive trees and oak trees in Byzantium. Contrary to what you may think, these were not cultivated consistently in the Mediterranean ecosystem of the Middle Ages; their uses to the human population fluctuated over time, giving the trees a history of their own, albeit one shaped by that of the people around them (and vice versa). The conversation is based on Alex's fascinating book,

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51:30

69. The experiences of Byzantine children, with...

Byzantium & Friends ·

2022/04/14

A conversation with Oana-Maria Cojocaru (Tempere University, Finland) about the images of Byzantine children in our sources, and the experiences that they would have had, once they made it past infancy. Our discussion forms a nice sequel to that with Christian Laes on childbirth (episode 66), and is based on Oana's recent book Byzantine Childhood: Representations and Experiences of Children in Middle Byzantine Society (Routledge 2022).

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148 results

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