On Tuesday, March 7, Benjamin Anderson (Cornell) and Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield) discussed their edited volume, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography, forthcoming this summer from Penn State University Press.
Sarah LaVoy-Brunette and Andrew Hicks kicked off the discussion as respondents. In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, between the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism.
Starting with the premise that the Byzantine Empire and the field of Byzantine Studies are both simultaneously colonial and colonized, the chapters address topics ranging from the material basis of philological scholarship and its uses in modern politics to the colonial plunder of art and its consequences for curatorial practice in the present.
Light refreshments will be provided.
Editor bios:
Benjamin Anderson is Associate Professor of the History of Art and Classics at Cornell University.
Mirela Ivanova is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield.
