The Medieval Academy Blog

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America are pleased to offer a a GIS basics workshop series for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Becky Seifried of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

GIS Basics for Byzantinists Workshop Series | Becky Seifried (University of Massachusetts Amherst) | Zoom | March 13 and March 20, 2026

The GIS Basics for Byzantinists workshop series will provide an introduction to the core concepts of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) through participatory sessions geared towards map creation and design. Using QGIS, a free and open-source GIS desktop software package, participants will learn how to create new research data and then transform it into an effective digital or static final map. The sessions are independent, but attending both is recommended to get the most out of the series. Participants are invited to use their own research project or idea as a basis for exploring the tool. Demo data will also be provided if needed. This workshop series is intended for those who have very little or no experience with GIS.

Each workshop is limited to 15 participants. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes March 4, 2026.

To read a full description of the workshop series and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/gis-basics-for-byzantinists.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2025–2026 lecture series.

Spindle Whorls and Women’s Work: Reframing Middle Byzantine Lives in the Athenian Agora
Fotini Kondyli, University of Virginia
March 4, 2026 | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)| | Zoom

Over 150 Middle Byzantine spindle whorls in bone and steatite have been uncovered in the Athenian Agora Excavations, found in domestic and work spaces as well as in burials. In this lecture, I move these objects out of the artifact catalogues where they often linger and let them speak, telling the stories of the women who used them and the non-elite lives they illuminate.

By tracing the “biographies” of these tools—their birth (materials, making, design), working life (use, skill, transmission), and economic movement (exchange, display, disposal)—we can reconstruct rhythms of women’s labor and situate spinning within the urban economy of Byzantine Athens. Highly decorated surfaces, combining polished planes with incised grooves and circles, reveal a tactile aesthetic meant to be felt as much as seen. These designs, often associated with sacred or protective motifs, suggest that spindle whorls were not merely functional but active participants in religious experience and domestic protection. Decoration also connects these objects to a wider world: parallels with Islamic spindle whorls from the 9th–10th-century point to cultural exchange through textiles and luxury goods, and their appropriation for aesthetic and apotropaic purposes in Byzantine contexts.

Portable and publicly performed, spinning transformed these tools into communication objects, signaling skill, status, and adherence to social norms, while transmitting tacit knowledge across generations. Thinking through these encounters, this lecture reframes spinning as a socially and religiously meaningful, economically consequential performance at the heart of Middle Byzantine urban life.

Fotini Kondyli is Associate Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of Virginia. She researches spatial practices, community-building processes, the material culture of Byzantine non-elites, and cultural, economic, and political networks in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Byzantine period (13th-15th centuries).

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/spindle-whorls-and-womens-work

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the 2025–2026 edition of its annual lecture with the Harvard University Standing Committee on Medieval Studies.

The Frankish Kingdom and the Eastern Empire: Rethinking Their Interconnections from a Medieval Perspective
Laury Sarti, University of Bonn
February 27, 2026 | 12:00–1:30 pm (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom

How did the Byzantines perceive the Franks since the end of Antiquity, and to what extent did they recognise Frankish imperial claims at the time of Charlemagne? This lecture reassesses the sources to challenge the traditional view of general Byzantine superiority, focusing on contemporary perspectives. It examines the relationship and connections between the Franks and the empire from the Merovingian period, and how these relations evolved over time. It does so by employing three approaches: the study of connectivity, exploring interactions and infrastructures; the study of networking, tracing the processes and outcomes of these interactions; and entanglement, analysing intersecting socio-political factors. The evidence shows that Charlemagne’s recognition in 812 followed standard imperial protocols, that the dual imperial order remained conceptually viable, and that the Franks retained ties to imperial structures while gradually asserting autonomy. Elite-level networks—embassies, marriage proposals, and Greek learning—sustained a limited but enduring imperial connection, which only weakened by the Ottonian period.

Laury Sarti is Heisenberg Professor in the Department of History at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on war as a factor of social change after the end of the Roman Empire, the legacy of Rome in the early medieval West, and physical mobility until the Late Middle Ages.

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/the-frankish-kingdom-and-the-eastern-empire

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

Exploring the Assumptions of Cultural History

Call for Fellowship Applications

The lenses of Western modernity surreptitiously shape the study of past cultures in ways that encourage us to disregard their own claims about their world in favor of those that align with the traditions of the Euro-American academy. The product of this influence is a colonialist narrative that presents past cultures as flawed or inconsistent (because they fail to meet modern criteria) and modern (usually Western) cultures as the resolution of these inconsistencies. Exploring the Assumptions of Cultural History is a three-year project sponsored by The Future of the Past Lab and The Center for Premodern Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities that seeks to interrogate the influence of modern assumptions in the study of cultural history and to imagine ways forward. The series will feature ten, week-long visiting fellowships grouped around three main themes: the transmission of evidence (2024-5), the role of comparative work (2025-6), and the influence of uniquely modern “-isms” (2026-7). In the Spring of the last year of the series (2027), fellows will come together in Minneapolis for a conference to share their findings and discuss the future of the study of non-modern cultures.

We invite applications for two, week-long visiting fellowships in the Fall semester of 2026 around the question of “-isms” (e.g., classicism, medievalism, biblicism, colonialism). We seek fellows whose work examines the influence of modern philosophies, theories, pop culture, and movements on the study of non-modern cultures. In particular, we are interested in projects that:

1) explore how “-isms” reveal important information about popular enthusiasm and contemporary scholarly engagement with the past.

2) interrogate the ways in which the application of modern “-isms” might undermine our understanding of the past.

3) imagine multidisciplinary approaches in the historical humanities and social sciences that address contemporary interests and our responsibility to the past.

If selected, fellows will give a public lecture on their work, record an episode of The Future of the Past Lab’s podcast, participate in a workshop on their project, and participate in a seminar with graduate students relating to their work. Depending on the fellow’s wishes and interests, other events may be scheduled as well. While at UMN, fellows will have access to office space, the University of Minnesota Library, and archival resources, and will be encouraged to make connections with UMN faculty. Fellows’ travel, lodging, and food costs will be covered, and each fellow will receive a $1,500 honorarium.

We welcome applications from scholars of all ranks (from advanced graduate students and up) and disciplines. Special consideration will be given to applications from candidates who represent a diversity of backgrounds and experiences, especially those that have been historically underrepresented in American academia. Likewise, we are interested in applications from colleagues who work in institutions and environments that do not have access to the resources available at an R1 institution or who would benefit from resources specific to the University of Minnesota. For your application, please submit:

1. An updated CV (in PDF; titled: [LAST NAME]_CV)
2. An Application Statement (in PDF; titled: [LAST NAME]_STATEMENT) of no more than two pages, single-spaced that explains your research, how it relates to the theme, and why you believe you are a good candidate for the fellowship.

Applications should be submitted to futureofpast@umn.edu with the subject line “Fellowship Application 2026” no later than Sunday, February 15^th. If you have any questions, please contact Noah Segal (nsegal@umn.edu).

About Us:

The Future of the Past Lab is an initiative based in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures at the University of Minnesota. Initiated in 2021, the goal of the Future of the Past is to prompt, facilitate, and platform public-facing work and conversations that think about the systems of power embedded in the histories of our fields; how those systems have favored particular dominant perspectives; how our practice as scholars and teachers perpetuates these systems today; and how we can make changes that remove barriers for under-represented individuals and world views.

The Center for Premodern Studies (CPS) is the home for collaborative scholarship and outreach in the historical humanities and social sciences at the University of Minnesota. Founded in 2021, it is the latest iteration in a long line of interdisciplinary ventures into the study of the past at Minnesota including the Mellon-funded Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World. CPS’s connections within and beyond the UMN will support fellows in engaging regional scholars, special collections, and museums.

Greetings from Rare Book School!

Our summer 2026 course schedule features nearly 50 classes, including in-person offerings at three new course locations: York in the United Kingdom, North Bennet Street School in Boston, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. For more in-depth course descriptions and past student feedback, visit our website: https://rarebookschool.org/schedule/.

Offerings that may be of particular interest to medievalists and early modernists include:

• H-25. Fifteenth-Century Books in Print & Manuscript, taught by Paul Needham & Eric White at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey
• H-205. Censorship from the Inquisition to the Present, taught by Ada Palmer at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois
• M-20. Seminar in Western Codicology, taught by M. Michèle Mulchahey at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia
• M-65v. From Poggio to Mabillon: The Study of Latin Manuscripts in the First Age of Print, taught by Anthony Grafton (online only)
• M-70.The Handwriting & Culture of Early Modern English Manuscripts, taught by Heather Wolfe at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia

For the best chance of being admitted, please submit your application(s) by the first-round deadline on 17 February. Applications received after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all available seats have been filled, but many of the classes will fill in the first round of admissions decisions. For information about the application process, visit rarebookschool.org/admissions-awards/application.

Please contact rbsprograms@virginia.edu with questions. We hope you’ll join us this summer!