The Medieval Academy Blog

Transmitting and Preserving Languages in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean

Date: 5^th June 2025

Venue: Balliol College, Gillis Lecture Theatre and Massey Room (Oxford OX1 3BJ) & online

Convenors: Daniel Gallaher and Ugo Mondini (University of Oxford)

The workshop explores how and why languages were taught, learned, and sustained across the diverse and shifting socio-cultural landscapes of the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean. Integrating history with historical sociolinguistics and adopting a comparative and cross-disciplinary perspective, the workshop aims to identify shared trends, comparable elements, and distinctive features in language learning and transmission. This approach offers a renewed perspective on the interconnected Mediterranean world—a region where multilingualism, mobility, and intercultural exchange were and are central to daily life. The impact of these dynamics on language teaching, preservation, and use has often been underestimated.

The event will include dedicated time for discussion and reflection, allowing participants to engage in a broader conversation about language, identity, and cultural transmission. At its core, the project reimagines the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, not merely as a space of teaching, learning, and multilingual exchange.

Speakers: Speakers: Samet Budak (ANAMED Koç University); S. Peter Cowe (UCLA); Erica Field-Marchello (Exeter College, Oxford); Mark Janse (University of Cambridge); Michiel Leezenberg (University of Amsterdam); Giorgia Nicosia (Ghent University); Lucy Parker (University of Nottingham).

For more information about the programme and to register for online attendance, please contact Ugo Mondini at ugo.mondini@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 14–16, 2026. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is May 12, 2025.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $800 maximum for scholars traveling from North America and up to $1400 maximum for those traveling from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/61st-icms

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

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 8th Forum Medieval Art/Forum Kunst des Mittelalters, Bochum / Dortmund, September 23–26, 2026. The biannual colloquium is organized by the Deutsche Verein für Kunstwissenschaft e.V.

The theme for the 8th Forum Medieval Art is Work: Traces, Constellations, Valuations. From a region with a significant medieval character and a post-industrial present we want to address the question whether the term “work” could be of any benefit when applied to the practices of medieval art production and their social and economic context. At the latest with the development of urban culture in the 12th/13th century, the concept of a society based on the division of work began to replace traditional forms of social differentiation – a process that was theologically founded in the 12th century and accompanied by a revaluation of art, craft and creativity.

The Mary Jaharis Center invites session proposals that fit within the Work theme and are relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is May 8, 2025.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and session chair) up to $500 maximum for participants traveling from locations in Germany, up to $800 maximum for participants traveling from the EU, and up to $1400 maximum for participants traveling from outside Europe. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/8th-forum-medieval-art

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 and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America are pleased to offer a week-long introduction to network analysis workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Professor Alexander Brey of Wellesley College, Professor Dr. Zachary Chitwood of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Dr. Ryan Horne of the University of California, Los Angeles, Professor Christian Raffensperger of Wittenberg University, and Dr. Katerina Ragkou of Philipps University of Marburg.

An Introduction to Network Analysis for Byzantinists, workshop by Alexander Brey (Wellesley College), Zachary Chitwood (University of Munich), Ryan Horne (UCLA), Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University), and Katerina Ragkou (University of Marburg), Zoom, May 12–16, 2025

Network analysis allows researchers to model and visualize the connections and interactions between different entities (e.g., people, places, objects) in their research data. This online workshop will offer Byzantinists an introduction to network analysis and its use in historical disciplines, with a focus on Byzantine and medieval studies. Participants will gain an understanding of the basic concepts of network theory and explore projects employing network analysis and the choices that lay the foundation for the projects, including data modeling, methodology, and tools. During practical sessions, participants will learn how to format their own data for network analysis, create a database in Neo4j and query their data, interface their Neo4j database with other tools, and publish their network analysis.

This workshop is intended for those who have very little or no experience with network analysis.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is 20.5 hours of instruction. Participants are expected to attend all sessions. Registration is first come, first served. All participants must be BSANA members. Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after May 2017) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority.

Registration closes Wednesday, May 1, 2025.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/intro-to-network-analysis-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 and the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the final lecture in the 2024–2025 East of Byzantium lecture series.

The Malleability of Memory in Memorializing the Saints
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom
Mary K. Farag, Princeton Theological Seminary

The ritual remembrance of holy ones in late antiquity sometimes had more to do with the intentional formation of the liturgical community than with the life of the holy one. Neither Pachomius, the early-fourth century leader of a monastic federation known as the Koinonia, nor Theophilus, the late-fourth and early-fifth century bishop of Alexandria, were even near contemporaries, but their characterizations were effectively exchanged. The aftermath of the first Origenist controversy rendered their memorialization distinctly malleable. Egypt would remember a Pachomian Theophilus, while Asia Minor would remember a Theophilan Pachomius. Pachomius would become the anti-Origenist that Theophilus was, while Theophilus would become the ascetic visionary that Pachomius was. Their remembrance in hagiographies and homilies was less about making the past present than about shaping the past for the present.

Mary K. Farag is Associate Professor of Early Christian Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. She studies the history of late antiquity with a focus on Christianity in Egypt.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

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

An East of Byzantium lecture. EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center that explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2024–2025 lecture series.

“This Holy One is Mother, Father, and Sister to Me”: Gender and Beyond in Byzantine Hagiography
Lucy Parker, University of Nottingham
April 24, 2025 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom

Gender has proved a powerful analytical framework for interpreting late antique and Byzantine hagiography. Historians have argued that male and female saints’ lives contained important differences, even perhaps forming different “subgenres” of hagiography. It has been suggested that, in contrast to male saints who fought external evil in cities or in the remote desert, female saints lived more cloistered lives and had to fight their own internal weaknesses. Some hagiographers emphasised that it was particularly impressive for women to achieve holiness given their innately weak and sinful nature. Female saints are often shown transcending their femininity, becoming “manly” as a necessary part of their journey to sanctity.

Yet this lecture will ask whether we have gone too far in drawing a clear distinction between the lives of female and male saints. It will explore some hagiographies of female saints (including the Life of Martha, mother of Symeon the Younger, the Life of Matrona of Perge, and the Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton) that do not fit neatly into the paradigms identified as characteristic of female lives. It will ask whether these unusual lives can be seen merely as exceptions to the general trend, or whether they force us to rethink our broader models, and to question how far a stark male-female gender binary determined understandings of holiness. Not all hagiographers were equally concerned with the differences between men and women, and not all female saints are presented as held back by, or needing to transcend, their femaleness. Rather than imposing a binary gender framework on hagiographic writing, we can instead explore variability in the use of gendered language and the gendering of holiness, and consider when and why gender and specific understandings thereof became particularly important in processes of sanctification.

Lucy Parker is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. Her first book, Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. As well as Byzantine hagiography, she also works on Syriac and Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern period.

(This lecture is rescheduled from November 2024.)

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/gender-and-beyond-in-byzantine-hagiography

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