Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

Benjamin Anderson is Associate Professor of the History of Art and Classics at Cornell University. He is the author of Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art and coeditor of Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison, and The Byzantine Neighbourhood: Urban Space and Political Action. Mirela Ivanova is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople.

List of Illustrations

Preface: The Historical Conjuncture



Introduction: For a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies

Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova



Part 1: How Is Byzantine Studies (Re)Produced?

1. Hieronymus Wolf’s Silver Tongue: Early Byzantine Scholarship at the Intersection of Slavery, Colonialism, and the Crusades

Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff

2. Byzantine Archaeology: Teaching the Tenth and the Twentieth Centuries

Hugh G. Jeffery

3. Byzantium in Exile

Şebnem Dönbekci, Bahattin Bayram, and Zeynep Olgun



Part 2: How Is Byzantium (Re)Produced?

4. Methodological Imperialism

Nicholas S. M. Matheou

5. The Price of Admission

Anthony Kaldellis

6. Byzantine Studies: A Field Ripe for Disruption

Averil Cameron

7. Subaltern Byzantinism

Maria Mavroudi



Part 3: How Are Byzantine Texts (Re)Produced?

8. Byzantine and Western Narratives: A Dialogue of Empires

Arietta Papaconstantinou

9. The Ethnic Process

Alexandra Vukovich

10. Publication and Citation Practices: Enclosure, Extractivism, and Gatekeeping in Byzantine Studies

Matthew Kinloch



Part 4: How Is Byzantine Art (Re)Produced?

11. The South Kensington Museum, Byzantine Egyptian Textiles, and Art-Historical Imperialism

Arielle Winnik

12. From Ethnographic Illustration to Aphrodisian Magistrate: Changing Perceptions of an Early Byzantine Portrait

Stephanie R. Caruso

13. Expanding and Decentering Byzantium: The Acquisition of an Ethiopian Double-Sided Gospel Leaf

Andrea Myers Achi

14. Equity, Accessibility, and New Narratives for Byzantine Art in the Museum

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams



A Collective Bibliography Toward a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies



List of Contributors

Index