"Re-reading the Imagined and Physical Space of the Byzantine Church" (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Byzantinist, 2015
Lynn Jones (ed.). Byzantine Images and their Afterlives. Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr
Journal of Greek Archaeology
This festschrift to mark the retirement of Professor Annemarie Weyl Carr as a teacher at the Southern Methodist University at Dallas, Texas, has three distinctive features. One is the extraordinarily effusive tributes to her by the contributors. The second is the high quality of the twelve papers. The third is the full and dense documentation of these papers – there is no waffle.
Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society
2016
this edited volume originated at the 2010 conference of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies entitled "Gender and Class in Byzantine Society." It offers a fresh perspective on how the "social indicators of gender" operated in Byzantium (ca. 300-1453), a society that recognized three genders and where a certain fluidity characterized the understanding of masculine and feminine roles. The introductory and concluding studies of Bronwen Neil and Damien Casey provide a conceptual framework by defining the methodology, delineating the limitations of the evidence, and demonstrating the potential of a theoretical approach to the study of gender in Byzantium. Chapters 3 to 8 center on female monasticism, literacy, and imperial women, while chapters 2 and 9 focus on male virtues, masculinity, and eunuchs. Lynda Garland explores how family ties lived on in Byzantine monasteries. Unlike in the West, Byzantine married men and women often took monastic vows, and many imperial and aristocratic monasteries were founded as family trusts, retirement homes, refuges, and dynastic memorials. Although forty Byzantine monastic foundation documents survive, Garland focuses on the five written by women (ca. 1100-1310), all belonging to foundations of imperial women. Strongly hierarchical organization and robust intergenerational family bonds characterize these convents. Garland explores the potential for female agency and exercise of authority within these institutions and portrays the typikon (foundation document) as an embodiment of the founder' s female voice.