07 Oct

Posted at 12:38h in Uncategorized

Retracing Connections is delighted to announce the launch of the research group Byzantium: Lives and Afterlives at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas of the University of Oslo. This research group is founded by long-term collaborators of Retracing Connections, Matthew Kinloch and Christine Amadou. The initiation of the research group will be marked by two events, with the participation of Retracing Connection team members Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University) and Christian Høgel (Lund University).  

Riksteppe: Inntog i Myklagard. Frida Hansen etter Gerhard Munthe, 1900. Foto: Øivind Møller Bakken, Det kongelige hoff. De kongelige samlinger.

The first event will consist of two short lectures and a discussion.

  • Christian Høgel (Lund) – Metaphrasis: Towards a New Taxonomy of Rewriting/ Translation from a Byzantine Perspective
  • Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala) – Entangled Storyworlds: A New Narrative of Greek and Ottoman Literature

 

The second event will be chaired by Matthew Kinloch, with the participation of Christine Amadou (University of Oslo), Christian Høgel (Lund University), Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University), and Tonje Haugland Sørensen (University of Copenhagen).
In Scandinavian narratives and depictions of the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire is virtually absent. And this is despite the fact that this empire existed from 330 to 1453 and, for long periods, possessed a geographical extent and a material and cultural wealth that exceeded the imagination of most Norse people.
But can we nevertheless speak of a Scandinavian Byzantium? Of millennia-old connections between Scandinavia and Constantinople? From the Varangians who served in the Byzantine capital in the 11th century to contemporary questions of European identity, Byzantium has also played a role in Scandinavia. In this round-table discussion, researchers who are familiar with Byzantium from different perspectives will come together. Together, they will recount the forgotten history of the relationship between Byzantium and Scandinavia. They will discuss trade and cultural influences, Byzantium as both a mirror and a spectre, Scandinavian research traditions, and how Sigurd Jorsalfare’s visit to Myklagard in 1110 came to be a national symbol in 1899.

The events are organized in collaboration between the Norwegian and Swedish committees for Byzantine studies, the Norway Research Foundation-financed project Narrative Hierarchies: Minor Characters in Byzantine and Medieval History Writing. They are open to all and can be attended in person or online. For more information and the links, contact the organizer. 

07 Oct

Posted at 12:06h in Uncategorized

Retracing Connections is delighted to announce that the MSCA Staff Exchange project Imperios and Margarona: From Premodern to Modern Translation (IMATRANS) was granted funding by Horizon Europe. Under the coordination of the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the project brings together the Universities of Athens, Münster, Oxford, and Uppsala, as well as the publishing houses Appell (Stockholm) and Kétos (Vienna). We would like to congratulate the project coordinator Markéta Kulhánková (Institute of Slavonic Studies, Czech Academy of Sciences) for this success!

Imperios and Margarona: Vindobonensis Theologicus Graecus 244 (f. 108v)

IMATRANS builds an international network of researchers, translators, and publishers to develop and critically evaluate an innovative, collaborative, and digitally enhanced model for researching and translating premodern European literature. Through structured intersectoral and interdisciplinary staff exchanges, the project brings together textual philologists, literary scholars, linguists, digital humanists, and publishing professionals to advance research on multilingualism, translation, and cultural transfer, while making late Byzantine romance accessible to broader scholarly and non-specialist audiences. The project focuses on late Byzantine romance, which remains largely inaccessible beyond specialist circles. It centres on Imperios and Margarona, a late Byzantine adaptation of the French romance Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne. As part of a trans-Mediterranean network of narrative transmission, the text provides a key case for investigating multilingual adaptation and cultural exchange. The research dimension is articulated through two complementary strands. A narratological commentary offers a systematic analysis of the romance within Byzantine and comparative contexts. In parallel, a dedicated work package investigates premodern translation and adaptation from linguistic and literary perspectives, exploring how narratives are reshaped across languages and how discourse traditions are transferred. Together, these strands situate I&M within a broader framework of multilingual narrative exchange. A central innovation lies in reconceptualising translation as a collaborative research practice. The project develops and tests a workflow combining AI-assisted draft translation, human post-editing, and cross-linguistic comparison. Through staff exchanges, IMATRANS ensures knowledge transfer, strengthens intersectoral collaboration, and supports capacity building, maximising its scientific and societal impact. 

07 Oct

Posted at 11:35h in Uncategorized

Retracing Connections is delighted to announce the creation of a new journal in the field – LAB: Literature Across Boundaries. 

LAB is an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of premodern literary texts. It serves as a platform for articles that deal with questions of literary history and theory from the fields of (European) Classics and Medieval Studies. As the first journal of its kind to take a distinctly theoretical and interdisciplinary approach, LAB aims at fostering the dialogue between scholars of Ancient Greek and Latin literature and those working on medieval literatures, especially Latin, English, German, Romance, Scandinavian and Byzantine traditions. The journal also welcomes contributions from adjacent disciplines such as history, philosophy, rhetoric, and religious studies, etc., thus laying the basis for a comparative approach to literary studies across temporal, geographic and cultural boundaries. Studies dedicated to literary texts from other antiquities and global Middle Ages will be considered on a case-by-case-basis, depending on their connection to the European literary tradition and common theoretical grounds.

The theme for the Issue 2 is open and authors are welcome to submit articles. Submitted articles will be published in open access on the website as soon as they have undergone peer review and typesetting. Find more information here. 

11 Sep

Posted at 14:19h in Other

Join us at the Swedish Institute at Athens for a session of the
Athens Greek Religion Seminar series with Dr Daria Resh (SIA).  

What is in the Bath? Space and Ritual in the Byzantine Legends of St. Barbara

The subject of this seminar sits at the crossroads of the history of storytelling – within the conventions of the hagiographical genre – and cultic practices directed towards saints, and brings into focus the early Byzantine Passions of St Barbara. A considerable part of Barbara’s story unfolds in a Roman bath, where the martyr first experienced her own conversion to Christianity and then converted the bath into a Christian site. Even though the story suggests that Barbara’s bath was an early pilgrimage destination and a center of a healing cult, and while Barbara’s cult was attested in Rome and Constantinople already in the seventh century, the site of the bath has never been identified and thus may be studied only as a literary, even if plausibly conceived, space. The paper untangles the literary representation of this space in two directions. On the one hand, it retraces the imaginary contours of the bath converted for Christian use and related ritual practices within their cultural and historical context. On the other hand, it questions how, by preserving its spatial focus, the story defies the antagonistic dichotomy of fiction and truth, thus gaining credibility in the eyes of its recipients.

The seminar takes place Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 17.00 (Athens) in a
hybrid format with live presence at the Swedish Institute at Athens and online via Zoom.

To attend, please register here.

11 Sep

Posted at 10:37h in Other, Uncategorized

We are happy to announce the publications of the Retracing Connections core research results – the critical edition and introduction to the Life of Saint Theodore of Edessa by Stratis Papaioannou and Charis Messis. This two-volume work offers a thorough re-evaluation of Theodore of Edessa, a groundbreaking yet little-known Byzantine Greek literary gem. The work, preserved in numerous manuscripts and translations into other medieval languages, is an extensive, two-part composition: the Life of Theodore and a hundred Chapters, supposedly composed by the protagonist saint of the hagiographical tale. Circulating under the pseudonyms of Basil of Emesa (the Life) and Theodore (the Chapters), the work is here firmly attributed to the renowned Georgian abbot Euthymios the Iberian (c. 955–1028), co-founder of the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos and the author of the more widely diffused Barlaam and Ioasaph, chiefly acclaimed for his massive corpus of translations from Greek into Georgian.

Volume I: Introduction provides a comprehensive socio-historical and literary study of the text and its author. First, it reconstructs Euthymios’s career, mapping his networks across Constantinople and Syro-Palestine, while also establishing a new chronology of his entire literary production in both Greek and Georgian, including a re-dating of Barlaam and Ioasaph. Next, it dissects Euthymios’s compositional techniques—which included translation from Georgian, silent appropriation of earlier texts, and rewriting—placing them within their wider literary-historical context and analyzing them in relation to Barlaam and Ioasaph. Furthermore, it examines the literary world created by Theodore of Edessa and its potential audiences. Finally, the volume traces the reception of Theodore’s Life and Chapters across the Greek, Georgian, Arabic, and Slavic worlds.

Volume II: Theodore’s Life offers the first critical edition of the Life’s two Greek versions alongside a lightly annotated facing-page translation of version β. An introduction details their manuscript transmission, distinguishing between the widely diffused version α and the author’s later, revised paraphrase, version β.

Both volumes are available open access through the links in the above. You can also use the same links to preorder the hardcover version of the books with special discount until September 25, 2026. 

We would like to invite to the presentation of the books, at the Swedish Institute at Athens and online. See the details below and register here.