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2014
Time and again, Byzantinists encounter the term „Byzantinism“ (Byzantinisme, Byzantinismus) and all the negative stereotypes on Byzantium and its culture associated with it; in Germany or Austria, for instance, sometimes even the research field of “Byzantinistik” is mixed up with “Byzantinismus”. But we have some good news: “Byzantinism”, “Byzantinisme” and “Byzantinismus” are on a trajectory towards extinction (or at least one can hope so). How can we know? In 2011, Erez Aiden, Jean-Baptiste Michel and their team in cooperation with Google published the “n-gram-viewer” (https://books.google.com/ngrams), a tool which allows to trace the relative frequency of words and phrases among all the millions of (English, French, German, …) books scanned for GoogleBooks over the last decade for the period 1800 to 2000. As they explained in an article in Science (cf. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Michel%20et%20al%20Quantitative%20analysis%20of%20culture%20Science%202011.pdf), this tool may allow for a quantitative analysis of the emergence, usage and decline of termini and concepts in the respective literatures over the last two centuries. Most recently, they also published a fascinating book with the title “Uncharted. Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture” (New York, 2013, 280 pp.). If we look at the graph for the frequency of “Byzantinism” in English texts for the period 1800 to 2000 (graph 1), we detect a dramatic decline in the usage of the term since its peak in late 1950s. Interesting enough, the trajectory for “Byzantinism” in French texts for the same period (graph 2) is very different, with a peak in the 1930s and ups and downs since then – but with a clearly downwards trend. “Byzantinismus” in German books (graph 3) experienced a first high around 1880, a second one right before WW I and a third one after WW II – with a dramatic decline since then. Of course, a further investigation into the actual cultural and ideological background of these trajectories in the three literatures and their differences would be most interesting; and one may ask if the general decline in the usage of “Byzantinism” may reflect less of an increased awareness for the “real” character of Byzantium, but more of an increased ignorance towards the meaning or even existence of the term (and the civilisation related to it) – which would be less good news for Byzantinists. Still, the possibility to inspect such trends with the digital help of “big data” is a most fascinating one. Other scholars are already working to develop similar tools for the analysis of past corpora of texts – such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, for instance – and so we can expect even more fascinating insights in the future.
International Conference Archives in the Age of Digital Humanities, Colégio do Espírito Santo, University of Evora, Evora, 24-25 October
Indexing Byzantium2018 •
Event: UWICAH 2020 Postgraduate Conference The Eastern portion of the Roman Empire, nominally known as the ‘Byzantine’ Empire, was Roman in identity (Ῥωμαῖοι - Rhōmaîoi) and culture. One of the most important aspects of Roman society was adaption and adoption. Thus, we must think of this wonderful empire not as ‘other’ or ‘in-between’ but as an empire that originated in the Classical/Ancient period and developed, adapted to survive, and thrived into the Medieval period. The Roman Empire was constant, yet like many empires, its geographical context differed as its power ebbed and flowed. The study of ‘Byzantium’ or the ‘Byzantines’ is a research field that suffers from several problems within the modern academic environment. Students and scholars who want to pursue the field of study are often faced with issues of accessibility, limited engagement or acknowledgment of the peoples of ‘Byzantium’ prior to university life, and most notably, not knowing where they fit within scholarly debate, disciplines, and reception. This paper will examine ‘Byzantium’ as an academic discipline, disseminate why it is problematic and on the periphery within the academic community, and provide some solutions to ease the issues surrounding its study and position with modern historiography. Keywords: Byzantium, Historiography, Academia, Periodization, Reception
Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 11
Alena Alshanskaya · Andreas Gietzen · Christina Hadjiafxenti (eds), Imagining Byzantium. Perceptions, Patterns, Problems2019 •
Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus - Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident - Mainz/Frankfurt, Christina Hadjiafxenti, RGZM Verlag / publishing house
Byzantium the other. Byzantium the pompous. Byzantium the eternal. The mere existence of this empire with his rich history and otherness from western European traditions spurred the minds of scholars, noblemen, politicians and ordinary people throughout its survival and long beyond its final downfall in 1453. Neglecting its great political and cultural influence on neighbouring countries and beyond, Enlightenment writers stripped Byzantium of its original historical reality and thus created a model, which could be utilised in very different constructs, stretching from positive to absolutely negative connotations. With the rise of new nationalisms, primarily in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and the associated politically inspired historical (re)constructions in the 19th and 20th century, the reception of Byzantium gained new facets, its perception reached into new dimensions. In this volume, we would like to shed some light on these patterns and the problems they entail, and show the different ways in which »Byzantium« was used as an argument in nation-building and in constructing new historiographical narratives, and how its legacy endured in ecclesiastical historiography.
2018 •
This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or responses to the twelve chapters of the recently published Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. These reviews discuss such issues as institutional settings, classical scholarship, rhetoric, political theory, literary criticism, historiography, logic, and philosophy in Byzantium. They also deal with the reception of the Neoplatonic ideas in Byzantium as well as with some individual figures such as Maximos the Confessor and Michael Psellos.
2001 •
… doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki, Helsinki
The Dynamics of Affect, Cognition, and Social Environment In the Regulation of Personal Learning Processes: The Case of Mathematics2001 •
Congresso Brasileiro de Mecânica dos Solos e Engenharia Geotécnica
Análise da interação entre as partículas em um solo expansivo tratado com areia, cal e cinza de casca de arrozJournal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences
The Importance of Paying Attention to Social Stigma Imposed on the Healthcare Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Letter to the Editor2022 •
Journal of Medical Virology
Targeting the viral‐entry facilitators of SARS‐CoV‐2 as a therapeutic strategy in COVID‐192021 •
2019 •
Indonesian Journal of Chemistry
Synthesis of Silica-Salen Derivative from Rice Husk Ash and its Use for Extraction of Divalent Metal Ions Co(II), Ni(II) and Cu(II)2019 •
Journal of Financial Intermediation
The flash crash: An examination of shareholder wealth and market quality2014 •
2019 •
Frontiers in Immunology
Loss of Dkk-1 in Osteocytes Mitigates Alveolar Bone Loss in Mice With Periodontitis2019 •
Journal of Medical Virology
Mixed cryoglobulinaemia and chronic hepatitis C virus infection: The rheumatic manifestations2001 •
Journal of Physical Chemistry & Biophysics
Helicity and Wave Switching in a Nonlinear Model of DNA Dynamics2012 •