Byzantium & Friends

A conversation with Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University) -- one hundred episodes after our previous one! -- on medieval European rulership from Iberia and Scandinavia to Rus' and Constantinople. We talk about succession and co-rulership and titles in ways that don't prioritize the British, French, and German models. Christian develops this more inclusive paradigm in his recent book Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe, 1000-1200 (Routledge 2024).

A conversation with Diana Mishkova (Center for Advanced Study, Sofia) about how the national historiographies of Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania cope with Byzantium -- how they try to appropriate, incorporate, circumvent, or abjure it, and so always reinvent it in the process. The conversation is based on Diana's comprehensive and lucid analysis in her recent book Rival Byzantiums: Empire and Identity in Southeastern Europe (Cambridge University Press 2023).

A conversation with Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) about production and consumption in the Roman world, especially by the 90% of the population who are less represented in our literary sources. How did they get by from day to day? What alternatives does the evidence suggest to the "subsistence" model that many ancient historians have used? The conversation is based on a paper on "Household Economics in the Roman Empire and Early Christianity," forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Households, and earlier publications, including The Roman Peasant Project 2009-2014: Excavating the Roman Rural Poor (Penn Museum/University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); “Tracking Liquid Savings at Pompeii: The Coin Hoard Data," Journal of Roman Archaeology 35 (2022) 1-27; and “Tracking Consumption at Pompeii: The Graffiti Lists,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 34 (2021) 552-584.

A conversation with Anna Henderson (ARC Humanities Press) about the world of academic publishing today, including its challenges, opportunities, and aspirations. ARC is a fairly recent venture, but has already published a number of excellent books in medieval studies (including on Byzantium). You can find out more about it here: https://www.arc-humanities.org In fact, the very first episode of this podcast was on a book published by ARC.

A conversation with Jennifer Westerfeld (University of Louisville) on the scripts that were used to write ancient Egyptian, especially hieroglyphs. Their last attested use was in the 390s AD, putting the end of their long history in our period. Meanwhile, Greek, Roman, and Christian observers were developing their own theories about how the script worked, often quite fantastic, and reacted to texts that were inscribed in public spaces. The conversation is based on Jennifer's fascinating book Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019). For more on Coptic in this period, see episode 13.