08 Jun

Posted at 13:17h in Uncategorized

Retracing Connections is happy to announce that the German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved the Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio ‘Historical and Transcultural Narratology’ at the University of Freiburg. Within this project, researchers are investigating narratives and narrative practices in various historical and cultural contexts. The spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre is the RC Advisory Board Member Prof. Dr Eva von Contzen, Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg.

A new historical-transcultural narrative theory

People have always told stories. Across all eras and cultures, narratives have played a vital role in social cohesion. The new TRR Historical and Transcultural Narratology examines pre-modern narratives – that is, those from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period – drawn from various cultural contexts. The TRR will test and further develop methods from the digital humanities in order to anchor comparative narrative research more firmly in the digital realm. For its research, the TRR utilises digital and AI-based methods, ranging from prompt engineering to more advanced AI architectures. The researchers’ aim is to develop a new historical-transcultural narrative theory that overcomes the narrow focus of current narrative theories on Western and modern or postmodern traditions. This new narrative theory is intended to encompass diverse historical narrative formats and functions from various cultural contexts. In doing so, the researchers will open up new avenues for comparative, interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies on a global scale.

“The Collaborative Research Centre promises a fundamental re-examination of storytelling in the past from a comparative perspective,” says spokesperson von Contzen. “The participating researchers come from 16 different disciplines, including Egyptology, Korean Studies, Theology, Classical Studies and Slavic Studies. We are exploring questions such as how people in past cultures told stories, in what contexts, for what purposes, and what their stories were like.”

The research findings are intended to facilitate a comprehensive historical and cross-cultural comparison of storytelling from a global perspective and to offer a fundamentally new insight into the origins, diversity and functions of narrative forms. Researchers from the consortium of the Universities of Freiburg, Bochum and Bonn will work closely with the Digital Humanities Lab at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Freiburg and the Bonn Centre for Digital Humanities.

We warmly congradulate Eva and her team and are looking forward to future collaborations! 
You can read the full announcement here. 

04 May

Posted at 11:32h in Uncategorized

Liminal Spaces and Spatial Practices in Byzantium (Routledge Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies Series, 2026) focuses on conceptions of spatial liminality in the Byzantine world by offering a novel interdisciplinary approach—combining concepts from social anthropology (liminality) and cultural geography (space) as methodological tools for historical investigation. Co-edited by Buket Kitapçı Bayrı and Myrto Veikou, the volume stems from a conference held in April 2023 at the Swedish Institute at Athens, organized in collaboration with the research program Retracing Connections: Byzantine Storyworlds in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic Slavonic (c. 950–c. 1100) ) (Uppsala University and Riksbankens Jubileumfond). Its main aim is to challenge binary oppositions such as inside/outside, core/periphery, isolation/connectedness, stability/instability, known/unknown, earthly/heavenly, self/other, and good/bad by presenting liminality as an epistemological tool. 

Across eleven chapters, the contributors explore whether certain types of spaces—such as rivers, deserts, islands, forests, mountains, houses, thresholds, gates, monasteries, lighthouses, and bridges—accommodate or even generate liminal situations in the perceptions of those who experience them. These spaces, along with the spatial practices and imaginings they inspire, are examined within their social and historical contexts to determine when, by whom, and why they were perceived as liminal. The volume also considers the effects of such spaces on the creation of new and alternative realities. 

Organized as a collaboration of ANAMED and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, this event welcomes Buket Kitapçı Bayrı, the volume’s co-editor, alonside Rebecca Darley, the volume’s English copy editor and ANAMED’s current senior fellow. 

 

Together, they will introduce the book’s key themes and discuss the intersections of liminality, space, and spatial practices in Byzantium. 

The event will take place in English with simultaneous Turkish translation at ANAMED Auditorium, İstiklal Caddesi No: 181 Merkez Han 34433 Beyoğlu İstanbul, Türkiye, İstanbul, 17:00 – 18:30, on 11 May 2026. More information. 

 
 
 

 

24 Apr

Posted at 18:10h in Uncategorized

There have been many stories in circulation about the 2021 International Congress of Byzantine Studies that was supposed to take place in Istanbul, but instead was moved to Venice-Padua and became ICBS 2022. Melek Delilbaşı, president of the Turkish National Committee of Byzantine Studies and the Turkish organizing committee of ICBS 2021-Istanbul, told her story of the events to Buket Kitapçı Bayrı in an interview published in Turkish in 2022. Sadly, Melek Delilbaşı had by then passed away in September 2022. An English translation has now been made available by Buket Kitapçı Bayrı.

I take this opportunity to express my deepest respect for Melek Delilbaşı and the other members of the Turkish organizing committee of ICBS 2021-Istanbul, for their warm inclusion of me in their community during my years in Istanbul (2019-2021), and for their constant kindness and relentless hard work under circumstances that are more difficult than most of us can imagine.

Ingela Nilsson

15 Oct

Posted at 13:10h in Uncategorized

How did you meet your first stylite? In the ruins of a Syrian monastery or in the pages of a Byzantine menologion? In a poem by Tennyson or a movie by Buñuel? Perched up in a Thessalian tree, or performing endurance on the top of a pole in New York’s Central Park? In a Cappadocian church fresco or a surrealist painting from the Second World War? Babbling incomprehensibly in a newly erected Umayyad minaret, or blogging from the tower chamber of an Austrian cathedral?

Pillar saints – stylites – flourished in Late Ancient Syria and have been the subject of enduring interest and fascination ever since. Showing commitment to a higher end by means of spending their lives standing on the top of pillars, towers and in trees, this perhaps most extreme and certainly most eye-catching form of Christian asceticism has evoked reactions of devotion, derision, admiration and contempt throughout the ages, leaving traces in Modern art and literature as much as in Orthodox Christian icons and vitas.

This volume, consisting of thirteen chapters by leading scholars in the field, looks at the textual and visual reception of stylites in a broad perspective, examining the rereadings and recastings of these Late Ancient superheroes in ways that demonstrate the historical and geographical continuity as well as discontinuity of the ideals they embodied. The volume is concluded with a short anthology of poems and images that illustrate the wide range of their reincarnations in religious and artistic imagination.

The open-access volume is published in the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul’s Transactions series and co-edited by our programme member Christian Høgel, who also contributed a chapter on stylites in Metaphrastic Menologion. Our programme member Charis Messis and our advisory board member Béatrice Caseau co-wrote a chapter on stylites in the Life of Saint Theodore of Edessa, the central text of our programme.

   

27 May

Posted at 11:33h in Announcements, Narrative Cosmonauts, Uncategorized

Join us in Rönnells Antikvariat (Stockholm) on Friday, June 7, 2024 at 18:00, for the launch of the new Swedish translation of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon by Ingela Nilsson, the principal investigator of Retracing Connections and the Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University.

The power of Eros is great. The young Clitophon knows that. He and his beloved Leucippe have been tossed around the ancient Mediterranean world like play balls for fate and desire. They have seen it all: pirates, potions and mock deaths, loyal friendships, cunning court speeches and divine interventions. In front of a stranger in the coastal city of Sidon, Clitophon spins the story of his love adventures. His story turns out to be “pure novel” and contains everything from Greek myths and exotic beasts to explanations of the physical journeys of desire and the benefits of sex between men. Where the god of love rules, nothing is improbable.

The new Swedish translation by Ingela Nilsson is published by Bokförlaget Faethon in the series Moly with a foreword by Rebecka Kärde and illustrations by Monica Hellström.

At Rönnells, Ingela Nilsson will present the publication in conversation with Niklas Haga, Grecist and publisher. More information here.