'Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond' - 54th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies
The 54th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies will be held in Oxford on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium bringcombines Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to religion's material nature and realities egrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. Taking a broad geographical and chronological view of the Byzantine world, the Symposium will range across Afro-Eurasia and from Antiquity to the period after the fall of Constantinople. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Objects in motion’, ‘Religion in 3D’, ‘Religious landscapes’, ‘Things without context’, ‘Things and their context’ and ‘Spatial approaches to religion’.
The Symposium will be hybrid, taking place at Oxford – Corpus Christi College and All Souls College –, and on Zoom.
Symposiarchs: Ine Jacobs, Julia Smith, Jaś Elsner.
PROGRAMME
Unless otherwise indicated, sessions and breaks will take place in Corpus Christi College.
Friday 17 March 2023
11.30-12.00 Opening statement
12.00-1.00 Inaugural lecture
Birgit Meyer – Catching up: Byzantine reverberations in the material study of religion
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.30 Session 1: Objects in motion
Anne Lester – Beyond the Borders, Outside the Frame. Translating Presence from Byzantium to the West after 1204
Ivan Foletti – Beyond the Myth of Byzantium: Ritual Installations and Visual Concepts in Seventh-century Tsromi, Mren, and Talin
3.30-4.00 Tea and Coffee break
4.00-5.30 Session 2: Religion in 3D
Paroma Chatterjee – Statues and Sacred Icons in Constantinople: Movement, Naturalization, and Identity
David Frankfurter – Christian Figurines of Late Antiquity and Perceptions of Idolatry
7.00 Reception
Saturday 18 March 2023
9.00-11.00 Free communications Session 1, All Souls College
Barbara Crostini – The Dura Synagogue as Performative Space
Verena Fugger – The Holy Rider from the Artemision: New Considerations on the Cult of Saints in Early Byzantine Ephesus
Alexis Gorby – Sensing Death: Late Antique Sarcophagi in their Ritual Context
Paweł Nowakowski – “At the mines they built places of worship.” Material Evidence for Religious Activities at Quarries and Mines in late antique Asia Minor
María J. S. Vicent – Worship in the Stones of Santa María de Quintanilla de las Viñas. The Stonework and Carved Motifs Used for Liturgy in Late-Antiquity Hispania
Nadine Viermann – Relics in Translation: Holy Objects in Constantinople Between City Centre and Urban Periphery
Joaquin Serrano del Pozo – Processions with Holy Relics in the sieges of Constantinople (AD 626–1204)
Nila Namsechi – The Religious Built Environment of Byzantine Naples (ca. 650-1000)
11.00-11.30 Tea and Coffee break
11.30-1.00 Session 3: Religious landscapes
Myrto Veikou – Cavernous Landscapes in the Byzantine Aegean: a Discussion of Materialities of Cult and Sensorial Topologies
Troels M. Kristensen – Alahan: Religious Landscapes and the Scales of Mobility
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.30 Session 4: Things without context
Regula Schorta – Eastern Silks in Western Treasuries
Béatrice Caseau – Sensoriality and Materiality in Byzantine Religious Rituals
3.30-4.00 Tea and Coffee break
4.00-5.30 Session 5: Things and their context
Brigitte Pitarakis – Contextualizing the Bronze Object: The Performative Power of Decoration and the Ritual Experience
Sean Leatherbury – Materialising Motion in the Early Byzantine Church
6.00 SPBS Executive Meeting, All Souls College
7.30 Dinner, All Souls College
Sunday 19 March 2023
9.00-10.30 Free communications 2, All Souls College
James Cogbill – Spoken Word and Material Object in Monastic Installation Ceremonies at the Theotokos Evergetis
Maximilian Lau – Images and Realities of the Ecumenical Councils in the Twelfth Century
Patrick Martin – Material theology: Spatial and Temporal Coherence in Middle Byzantine Last Judgements
Dorota Zaprzalska – Assemblage Theory and Icons: Composite Icons as an Assemblage within an Assemblage
Gang Wu – Possible Buddhist Influence on the Byzantine Silk Industry
Anna Muthesius – ‘Silken relic’ Material Culture East and West: a Sign of Common Humanity Across Time and Civilisations?
10.30-11.00 Tea and Coffee break
11.00-12.30 Session 6: Spatial approaches to religion
Ann Marie Yasin – Sacred Space Social-Time Machines: Accumulation Value and Material Affordances
Francesca Dell’Acqua – Putting on the Lord. The bosom as a locus for private devotion (seventh–ninth centuries)
12.30-1.00 SPBS AGM
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.00 Closing lecture: Material religion in writing
Ildar Garipzanov – Weather Control and Manuscripts’ Margins in the Early Medieval West
Closing and announcement of the 55th Spring Symposium
