02 May

Posted at 11:35h in Other


Retracing Connections and the Swedish Institute at Athens are presenting an online research dialogue with
Fotini Kondyli (Virginia/Patras)
moderated by Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala)

 on the topic of

Layers of Urban History: From Modern to Byzantine Athens through the Athenian Agora Excavations Archives

Can modern urban experiences shape the way we understand Byzantine cities? In this dialogue, we will discuss  the impact of modern urban experiences on the interpretation of Byzantine Athens, drawing from archaeological records and contemporary socio-economic phenomena. In doing so I follow two distinct story lines. Through an examination of the Athenian Agora Excavations Archives, Fotini Kondyli discusses how the excavation and recording of the Byzantine layers at the Agora informed narratives about Athens’ post-classical life and urban development. I then turn to contemporary experiences such as Greece’s economic crisis and Athens’ bottom-up urban projects in the crisis aftermath to highlight the relevance of contemporary experiences in enriching our understanding of Byzantine Athens’ spatial configuration and urban dynamics.

The Dialogue takes place online via Zoom on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at 18.00 (Athens).

Register here. 

29 Mar

Posted at 17:12h in Calls

The History of Science in the Medieval World (HSMW) summer school, organized by St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, with Academic Theatre Ikaros, in cooperation with the International Summer Seminar in Bulgarian Language and Culture (University of Veliko Tarnovo), with the support of the Faculty of Slavic Studies, Sofia University is happy to announce its Second 2024 edition which will take place from 15 to 19 July 2024 in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. 

In its pilot 2022 edition, HSMW Summer School introduced the participants to the medieval epistemic fields (sciences) which study the natural world (the kosmos) as a space, namely geography, cosmography, and astronomy. In 2024, we shift the focus to the history of knowledge and the practitioners and their practices: from the geographers and the astronomers, the map and instrument makers, to the users of medieval herbals and the artisans preparing sgraffito pottery and enamel. 

The instructors include: Marie-Hélène Blanchet (CNRS, UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée, Monde byzantin); Chiara D’Agostini (Department of Culture and Language, University of Southern Denmark); Aneta Dimitrova (Faculty of Slavic Studies, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”); Stephanie Drew (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York); Rossina Kostova (Department of Archaeology, Faculty of History, St Cyril and St Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo); Divna Manolova (MSCA Paris Region Postdoctoral Fellow, Université PSL-Observatoire de Paris, SYRTE, CNRS); Angel Nikolov (Faculty of History, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”); Shannon Steiner (Independent Researcher, Practicing Goldsmith).

The participants will acquire fundamental knowledge concerning the place and role of the sciences in the intellectual world of the Middle Ages. They will also develop an understanding of premodern science as a spectrum of disciplines wider than the late antique framework of the four mathematical sciences (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) and inclusive of all epistemic domains dedicated to the creation, preservation, and transfer of knowledge. The School relies on a discussion-based and experiential / experimental format. That is, the School includes workshops, which will guide the participants into the use of medieval scientific manuscripts, texts, and instruments, and will introduce them to tradition and modern practice of sgraffito ware production in the city of Veliko Tarnovo. The lectures will be conducted in a hybrid way, whereas the workshops will be in person.

Application Deadline: 29 April 2024  
In order to apply, please send a short bio and description of what motivates your application (maximum one page altogether). There is no need to submit your extended CV. Please indicate in your application whether you would like to attend the Summer School in person or online.
Please address your application materials and your informal inquiries to Dr Divna Manolova.

Available places: The School offers ten places for in-person participants wishing to attend both the lecture and workshop sessions. There is no limit for the number of online participants, but their registration is restricted solely to the lecture sessions. During the selection process, preference will be given to MA and PhD students, but researchers, writers, artists, and non-academic professionals with an interest in the Middle Ages and / or History of Science are also welcome to apply.

We cannot offer any financial support to cover travel and accommodation expenses. There is no participation fee.
The common discussion language of the School will be English. If the participants know a medieval scholarly language (for this edition: Latin, Greek and/or Old Church Slavonic), this would be an advantage, but it is not an essential requirement for participation.

08 Mar

Posted at 11:45h in Other

The contemporary art exhibition  “Translating Worlds,” focusing on issues of translation and travelling stories, was curated by Milan Vukašinović and Nilüfer Şaşmazer, as a part of the Retracing Connections programme. The exhibition took place at Depo, Istanbul between November 2023 and January 2024. It featured existing and new works from fifteen international artists, including paintings, drawings, embroideries, sculptures, video and audio installations, and a lecture performance. The exhibition was conceived not only as communication outlet for the programme’s research results, but as an additional research activity that aimed to amend the inability of contemporary Translation Studies to account for all the meanings and practices of translation in the Middle Ages.

This webinar presents the academic and creative process behind this exhibition, the final artistic products, as well as the intellectual contributions it provided to the overall research project. It asks the questions of compatibility between translation studies, Byzantine and peri-Byzantine texts, historical processes, tavelling stories, trans-linguistic storyworlds and the medium of contemporary art. In this multifaceted intersection, contemporary art became the venue for untranslatability, negotiating between the personal, the poetic and the political. As it encountered the composite Byzantine worlds, it elucidated transhistorical instances of co-creation and communal existence. At the same time, by reintroducing medieval texts into the physical space, the artists gave them new material, visual and auditive forms. Thus, this collaboration probed the possibility of new secular rituals for the premodern artistic production, previously severed from its original ritual contexts through the intellectual practices of postmedieval, Western academia.     

The webinar by Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala University)
is organized by the Center for Medieval Arts & Rituals (University of Cyprus)
on April 4, 2024, at 16.30 (EET).
For more information and registration contact Andria Andreou.  

08 Mar

Posted at 11:35h in Other

Retracing Connections and the Swedish Institute at Athens are presenting an online research dialogue between
Myrto Veikou (Patras) and Markéta Kulhánková (Prague),
moderated by Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala) on the topic of

From narrative to lived spaces: Digenis Akrites in recent researche
Digenis Akrites holds a special place in both Byzantine and modern Greek literature. Previously often seen as a kind of national epic, it is now most often read as a heroic and romantic poem set in the Eastern borderlands of Byzantium. Surviving in different versions, the time and place of the poem’s composition are difficult to determine, but there is a general agreement on a twelfth-century Constantinopolitan context for the writing down of
an orally transmitted story. Recently, Digenis has been re-read in various ways related to space. John Kee drew on narrative theory and geography in his article in Byzantinoslavica (2022) and Myrto Veikou is currently applying a landscape perspective to Digenis in a comparison with the Arab Epic of the Holy Warrior (Dhat al-Himma). At the same time, Markéta Kulhánková, who translated Digenis into Czeck together with Ondřej Cikán (2018), is now finishing her work on a narratological commentary in which narrative space has come to play a significant role. What is the difference between narrative space and the physical landscape in which the story of Digenis is placed? How are the two related? Why do we care about the narrative space of Digenis? How can a storyworld be understood as a lived space? And why does space even matter? These are questions that will be addressed in a discussion between Myrto Veikou and Markéta Kulhánková, moderated by Ingela Nilsson.

The Dialogue takes place online via Zoom on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at 18.00 (Athens).

Register here. 

05 Feb

Posted at 17:51h in Narrative Cosmonauts

In the Greco-Roman narrative tradition, the ancient Greek novels play a crucial role: as pioneers in romantic storytelling, as models for successive narratives in Greek (including much hagiography), and as inspiration for writers like Shakespeare and Madeleine de Scudéry. Later this spring, one of the most playful and adventurous novels – Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius – will appear in a new Swedish translation by Ingela Nilsson.

Lovers of fiction have something to look forward to!