The Byzness, 15th June 2025
Oxford University Byzantine Society
THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY BYZANTINE SOCIETY
The Byzness, 15th June 2025
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1.
NEWS AND EVENTS
2. CALLS FOR PAPERS
3. JOBS AND SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
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1. NEWS AND EVENTS
Byzantine Studies Lectures (NHRF), June 2025
Athens and Jerusalem in the Middle Ages - Teresa Shawcross, Princeton University
Monday - June 16 - 18:00 EET
The lecture will be hosted by Princeton Athens Center: 3 Timarchou Str. 11634 Athens
Those who wish to attend in person must register following this link here.
To join via Zoom please follow the link here.
5-day course on Pre-Islamic Arabia and Arabic at Princeton January 2026
Princeton, New Jersey (USA) January 13-17, 2026
Since 2004, the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University has organized a series of short, intensive courses for graduate students on a variety of subjects in the broad field of Islamic studies not normally covered in the Princeton curriculum. In each case, an internationally-recognized expert has been brought in to teach the course over a period of five weekdays.
This year, we plan to offer such a course entitled, “From Gindibu to Muhammad – Pre-Islamic Arabias, Arabics, and Arabs.”
The course will take place from January 13-17, 2026. The course is intended primarily for graduate students, both from Princeton and from other universities.
The instructor will be Dr. Ahmad al-Jallad, a leading expert in the study of pre-Islamic Arabia, the religions and cultures of its inhabitants, and the region’s linguistic history. The objective of the program is to present important aspects of these fields.
The program will cover the following topics:
- From Pre-Historic Arabia to the Peninsula of the “Arabs”
- The history of writing in Arabia – literacy, writing cultures, and languages
- Origins of writing in Arabia, from the late Bronze Age until late antiquity
- The emergence of the Arabic script in its late antique cultural setting
- Selection of key epigraphic texts
- Ancestral Arabian Religion(s)
- The Nomads
- The oases of Ancient North Arabia
- Ancient Yemen
- Late Antiquity and the Monotheistic Zeitgeist
- The Archaeology of the Quran
Applications must be emailed to Meriam Essa (me7...@princeton.edu) in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University by August 1, 2025. The subject line of the email should read, "Application for Pre-Islamic Arabic and Arabia Workshop."
Applications should comprise the following:
Letter of application with statement of interest CV Names, positions, and email addresses of two referees. All items should be included in a single attachment, which may be a pdf. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance around August 15, 2025.
Registration for the conference 'Gregory of Nazianzus: poet of networks' (Cambridge, 4-5/09/2025)
We are delighted to share the programme of the forthcoming conference “Gregory of Nazianzus, poet of networks”, which will take place at the Faculty of Classics and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, on Thursday 4 – Friday 5 September 2025.
This will be an in-person event. Please register by 31 July at the link here.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at ln...@cam.ac.uk or mj...@cam.ac.uk
This workshop, generously funded by the Martin Rees Conference Fund of Trinity College, will centre Gregory’s poetry to ask how literary connectivity relates to sociocultural engagement. We are especially interested in exploring Gregory’s poems as a window on dynamics of interaction between literary intertextuality and the construction of social networks.
Programme
Thursday 4 September 2025, Classics Faculty (R 1.04)
8.50 arrivals and coffee
9.10 introductory remarks
Session 1. Chair: Philip Hardie
9.20 – 10.10 Kristoffel Demoen (University of Ghent) ‘Serious Play, Self-Justification, and Counter-Invective. On metron, yet again.’
10.10 – 11.00 Gianfranco Agosti (University of Pisa) ‘Gregorius epigraphicus. Gregory's poems in metrical inscriptions’
11.00 – 11.20 break
Session 2. Chair: Lea Niccolai
11.20 – 12.10 Matteo Agnosini (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) ‘Gregory’s Intertextual Asceticism: A Network of Allusions in Carm. 2.1.45’
12.10 – 13.00 Alessandro De Blasi (University of Padova) ‘Martyr who endured beyond the peaks of pain’. On Gregory Nazianzen’s self-depiction in Poem II 1,14 and the martyrdom of Mark of Arethusa (Greg. Naz. Or. 4, 88-89)’
13.00 – 14.00 lunch
Session 3. Chair: Ella Kirsh
14.00 – 14.50 Thomas Kuhn-Treichel (University of Heidelberg) ‘From name-dropping to networks: constructing connections through references to authors in Gregory’ Nazianzen’s poems’
14.50 –15.40 Anna Lefteratou (University of Cambridge) ‘Gregory of Nazianzus’ women: literary and social networks in Gregory’s letter-poem to Olympias and its models’
15.40 – 16.10 break
Session 4. Chair: Mary Whitby
16.10 – 17.00 Matteo Domenico Varca (University of Rome La Sapienza) ‘Grace of the Spirit, grace of the metres: the poems of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Apollinarian controversy’
17.00 – 17.50 Neil McLynn (University of Oxford) ‘Minimizing Maximus: a culture war in context’
19.30 drinks and conference dinner
Friday 5 September 2025, Trinity College (Old Combination Room)
9.00 coffee
Session 5. Chair: Simon Goldhill
9.30 – 10.20 Christos Simelidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) ‘Faith and form: Christian reservations about Gregory’s use of pagan literary models’
10.20 – 11.10 Jessica Tasselli (University of Marburg) ‘Quintus Smyrnaeaus’ legacy in Gregory of Nazianzus’
11.10 – 11.30 break
Session 6. Chair: Mathijs Clement
11.30 – 12.20 Connor Purcell Wood (University of Cambridge) ‘Dining with gods and bishops: a line from the Hesiodic Catalogue in a Christian world’
12.20 – 13.10 Estella Kessler (University of Oxford) ‘Gregory of Nazianzus and the tradition of the 7 wonders of the world’
13.10 Concluding remarks
13.30 Lunch
14.15 Wren Library tour of Gregory manuscripts
15.00 Departures
2. CALLS FOR PAPERS
Call for Papers: Orality, Aurality, and Literacy in “Late Late Antiquity” (450-700 CE)
Late Antiquity is often perceived as a period dominated by written culture – a “bookish” age of
intertextuality, bureaucratic documentation, and erudite literary production. Yet this view overlooks the vibrant interplay between oral performance, aural reception, and textual composition that shaped late antique literary and cultural life. Recent scholarship has challenged the assumption that oral traditions declined in this era, only to reemerge in the Middle Ages. Instead, we now recognize that Late Antiquity was a dynamic period where oral, aural, and literate practices coexisted and influenced one another in complex ways.
This conference seeks to explore the role of orality and aurality in the period after the fall of Rome, until the beginning of VIII century, in what can be called a “Late Late Antiquity” (or simply a “Later Antiquity”), examining how performative traditions persisted, evolved, or were reinvented in a world increasingly defined by written authority; and this, also in epochs when structures for oral/aural dimensions were dismantled or in decline, so as the occasions of performative arts. We invite contributions that interrogate traditional narratives of cultural decline or rupture, instead highlighting continuities, adaptations, and innovations in oral and aural culture between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, centuries that we can expect becoming more and more literary as the public was decreasing and so the prerogatives for live performances.
Key Questions and Topics
We welcome papers addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
1. Performance and Reception
- How were late antique texts (e.g., panegyrics, hymns, homilies, epic poetry) composed for oral delivery?
- What role did public recitation, liturgical chant, and theatrical performance play in late antique literary culture?
- How did audiences engage with texts aurally, and how did this shape literary composition?
2. Orality and Textuality
- How did oral traditions influence “high” literary genres (e.g., classicizing poetry, historiography, rhetoric)?
- In what ways did late antique authors mediate between oral and written modes of composition?
- How did monastic, popular, and vernacular oral traditions interact with elite literary production?
3. Cultural and Institutional Contexts
- How did courts (imperial, barbarian, ecclesiastical) serve as hubs for oral and performative culture?- What was the impact of Christianization on oral traditions (e.g., condemnation of pagan spectacles vs. development of hymnography)?
- How did late antique education (rhetorical schools, monastic training) preserve or transform oral practices?
4. Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approaches
- Comparisons between Late Antiquity and earlier (Archaic Greek, Roman Republican) or later (medieval) oral cultures.
- The interplay between oral, aural, and visual culture (e.g., ekphrasis, liturgical spaces, monumental inscriptions).
- Methodological challenges in reconstructing oral/aural dimensions from textual and material evidence.
5. Reassessing Late Antiquity’s “Literary Turn”, with particular regard to the last centuries of this “new” historical periodization
- Was Late Antiquity truly a period of “democratization” or “elitism” in literary culture?
- How did new genres (hagiography, homiletics, paraphrase literature) reflect oral-
aural-textual hybridity?
- Did the rise of codices and bureaucratic writing marginalize orality, or did they coexist synergistically?
Submission Guidelines
• Abstracts of 250–300 words (excluding bibliography) should be sent
to oraulituib...@gmail.com by 01/07/2025.
• Please include a brief biographical note (max. 100 words) with institutional affiliation (if
applicable).
• Presentations should be 20 minutes long, followed by a 10 minutes long discussion.
• The conference will be held preferably in-person, but also hybrid/online deliveracy is
possible on 16-18 October 2025 at the Institut für klassische Philologie und neulateinische
Studien, University of Innsbruck (Ágnes Heller Haus, Innrain 52a)
Publication Plans
Selected papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume or special journal issue.
Key Dates
• Abstract deadline: 01/07/2025
• Notification of acceptance: 15/09/2025
• Conference dates: 16-18/10/2025
Organizers
Martin Bauer-Zetzmann, Simon Ellinger, Riccardo Stigliano, Chiara Telesca
We look forward to submissions that challenge conventional boundaries between orality and literacy, offering fresh perspectives on Late Antiquity as a period of dynamic cultural exchange.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: WORKSHOP & THEMED JOURNAL ISSUE: Architectures of the Apocalypse
The word apocalypse contains a paradox. In common usage, it means, “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm” (OED); but the word’s roots come from the ancient Greek for “unveiling."
Apocalypse contains both end and beginning, annihilation and exaltation. The apocalyptic promises death and destruction, yes, but also, knowledge and transformation. The apocalypse is above all a threshold. Thus, as an object of inquiry, apocalypse calls for the examination of perspective and perception, as much as of semiotics and the historical.
Many readers’ associations with the word apocalypse will be to the New Testament Book of Revelation. Others might think first of more recent (post-1945) literary and cinematic imaginings of the dystopian. For others still, plagues, the fall of empires, and climate emergencies will come to the fore. The character of these apocalyptic cataclysms and revelations varies not only according to the specificities of history, religion and culture; epoch or technology; genre or medium; but also in the nature of the destruction and revelations promised.
It is clear that we are living through yet another historical moment in which the concept of apocalypse has become both pressing and omnipresent. How can we take the word apocalypse itself as an invitation to transcend the obvious, and access new knowledge and new ways of knowing? Do human beings need some kind of absolute limit, an absolute that makes contingent structures possible? Nearly every religion’s imagining of time's shape contains some form of projected ending. Meanwhile, contemporary astrophysics delivers its own version of the ends and beginnings of the cosmos, on equally grand scale. One question that animates this proposal is whether or how the polyvalent and multifaceted notion of apocalypse operates as a formal, necessary thought structure; that is, as a framework necessary to the human ability to think about time, knowledge, or historicity.
This multi-day conference/workshop will bring together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines in order to examine the notion of “apocalypse, ” with a view to the publication of their papers in a dedicated forthcoming issue of the journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques. Thematic strands might include:
• Ecology, climate, and the Anthropocene in historical perspective
• Mysticism and eschatology in world religions, including Messianic movements
• Scale and temporalities, both nano- and cosmic-, in dialogue with the natural sciences
• Human bodies as sites of historical inscription, both in archaeological and speculative contexts
• Representations of apocalypse in the visual arts and in music
• Narrative perspectives: fictions, genres, prophetic voices, survivor tales
• Medicine, technology, and other sometimes-secular renderings of human sin
• Hopes and disappointments, planned-for endings that did not arrive
• Historical frames: cataclysm and cultural extinction as both fact and recurring trope
Please submit proposals of 350-500 words by May 31, 2025, using this Google form: https://forms.gle/8LrkePDVcmCUJFro6; responses by June 15, 2025.
Workshop to be held in-person in Boston, USA, 26-28 February 2026, pending budgetary and other considerations.
“Plan B” is a hybrid option.
Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques is a peer-reviewed, bilingual English/French journal. Authors may write in either language. Texts suitable for peer-review will be due during the Spring of 2026, in view of publication in early 2027.
For more information contact Irit Kleiman, kle...@bu.edu
3. JOBS AND SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Fellowship: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: annual theme 2026 "Small Forms"
The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is home to exceptional historical special collections of manuscripts, printed works, maps, musical materials, and other collection objects, both in terms of scope and quality, from numerous regions in Europe, Africa and Asia. The library catalogues and researches this cultural heritage which it has been entrusted and which it systematically complements with modern research literature by using hermeneutic, digital and material-analytical methodologies.
The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is reviewing its scholarship program to strategically enhance its profile as a research library and to further strengthen its cooperation with other academic institutions. Two measures are at the center of this review: first, expanding eligibility to applicants from universities and research institutions in Germany and second, introducing a thematic focus on selected topics for the scholarships. Preference will be given to research projects that demonstrate a clear connection to the unique collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
2026 Annual Theme: Small Forms – Between Materiality, Mediality and Genre
Application deadline is September 30, 2025. Duration of stay - according to project - one to three months.
Minimum requirement for an application is a first university
degree at the time of submission. The monthly stipend is
_1,300 € for graduates without a doctorate (category A)
_1,600 € for doctoral graduates or applicants with comparable qualifications
(category B)
In addition, a travel allowance of up to 500 € may be granted.
For more details about the theme and how to apply, please see the announcement on the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin's webpage: https://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/extras/spezielle-interessen/scholarship-program
The program is open to German and international scholars.
Contact Information
Heinz-Jürgen Bove
Benutzungsabteilung | Referat Wissenschaftliche Dienste
+49 (0)30 / 266 433 141
Contact Email
https://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/extras/spezielle-interessen/scholarship-program
Excellence Cluster "Understanding Written Artefacts" (Universität Hamburg): Doctoral + Postdoctoral + Advanced Postdoctoral Positions
The "Understanding Written Artefacts" Cluster at the University of Hamburg is seeking to recruit doctoral, postdoctoral and advanced postdoctoral researchers to pursue research projects that fit its overall comparative research profile and with a clear focus on the study of written artefacts.
Projects focusing on artefacts from Asia, Africa, and the Americas are particularly encouraged. Deadline for applications: 22 June 2025.
For full information click on: doctoral position – postdoctoral position – advanced postdoctoral position
Full Professor of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University acting as the Director of the Koç University Center for Byzantine Studies (GABAM), Istanbul, Türkiye
Koç University invites applications at the level of Full Professor for the position of Director of the Koç University Center for Byzantine Studies (GABAM) and a fulltime faculty position at the Department of Archaeology and History of Art (ARHA). The anticipated start date of the position is Fall 2025.
Candidates should have an academic background in Late Antique and/or Byzantine archaeology, history of art, and/or cultural heritage management and a demonstrable, internationally recognized outstanding research and teaching track record related to Late Antique and Byzantine Studies.
Founded as the Koç University Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies in 2015 and known as the Koç University Sevgi Gönül Center for Byzantine studies since 2023, GABAM counts as the first research center dedicated to Late Antique and Byzantine Studies in Türkiye.
The Director of GABAM is expected to take a visionary leadership role in further enhancing the global impact and reputation of the research center, driving the center’s research profile both within and outside Türkiye. The director will be responsible for fostering innovative and interdisciplinary research focused on the Late Antique and Byzantine worlds, organizing impactful events such as lectures, workshops, and the International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, maintaining a strong publication agenda, and actively pursuing national and international funding opportunities.
The Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University focuses on archaeology, maritime archaeology, the history of art, Late Antique and Byzantine studies, heritage and museum studies from a multi- and interdisciplinary perspective. The teaching and research in the department covers a broad variety of material cultures, chronological periods, languages, and civilizations of Anatolia and the larger Mediterranean world, ranging from Prehistory and the Bronze and Iron Ages, to the Graeco-Roman, Late Antique and Byzantine, Seljuk, Medieval, Ottoman and contemporary eras.
Located in Istanbul, the earlier capital of the Byzantine Empire, Koç University is a foundation-funded, non-profit institution located in Istanbul, Türkiye. The medium of instruction is English.
Eligible candidates should submit the following documents via Academic Jobs Online to be considered for the position:
• Cover letter
• Curriculum vitae
• Vision statement for the Koç University Center for Byzantine Studies (GABAM)
• Teaching philosophy and research agenda
• Contact information for three referees
• Fill out Application Summary Form
The deadline for the application is July 6, 2025. Incomplete applications will not be taken under consideration. Content-related questions about the position may be directed to Prof. Dr. Inge Uytterhoeven, Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (iuytte...@ku.edu.tr). Inquiries concerning the application procedure and related matters may be addressed to the College’s Faculty Administrator Mr. Murat Ak (mu...@ku.edu.tr).
For further info, see here.
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Alexander Johnston
MPhil in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies
President, Oxford University Byzantine Society
http://oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com