Reports by SPBS Members

Conferences held in 2005
Back to Main Reports Page

39th SPRING SYMPOSIUM OF BYANTINE STUDIES

Performing Byzantium
2-4 April 2005
Institute of Byzantine Studies
Queen's University Belfast

Symposiarch: Professor Margaret Mullett

For decades the highlight of the Byzantine year at Queen’s was taking a party of students to the Birmingham symposium where they met scholars from all over the world and students from other universities. Now the symposium came to Belfast and with it the world. Over a hundred symposiasts from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, UK and the USA met from 2-4 April 2005 to discuss the subject of performance. The meeting began with an expedition reminiscent of the great days of the Birmingham symposium when a champagne bus carried off the speakers on the eve of the symposium to a tour of Hillsborough Castle and more drinks and then by the kind invitation of James and Kathryn Baird to supper at their house. The next morning saw the opening of the conference by Victoria Solomonidis, the Cultural Counsellor of the Greek embassy in London, and Professor KD Brown, PVC for Academic Planning.

The first session offered a sense of performance in the context of the empire—Jonathan Shepard on the commonwealth, Ruth Macrides on ceremony in the palace and Rosemary Morris on ceremony in the provinces. After lunch in the Institute of Governance the symposium turned to drama with sharply focused papers by Przemek Marciniak, Massimo Bernabo and Ruth Webb. After tea, Dion Smythe gave a lecture on Byzantium in opera, chaired by Vivien Hewitt, first graduate in Byzantine Studies at Belfast, and herself an opera producer. We then went to the Film and Drama Centre across University Square to view the exhibition of photographs by Dimitrios Sofokitis of Theo Angelopoulos’s latest film: Trilogy: weeping meadow. After dinner in the Great Hall, we came back to the Film and Drama Centre to watch Andrew Walker White’s performance with drama students of QUB of two late antique mime texts.

Sunday began early at 8 o’clock with Anglican eucharist and ended late at 2 am with a screening of the new Angelopoulos film. In between there were communications, lectures on performance in monasteries (by Mark Jackson, John Wortley and Derek Krueger) in church (by Alex Lingas, Mary Cunningham, Lioba Theis and Andrew Walker White) and in the theatron (by Niels Gaul, Michael Grunbart and Andrew Stone), the opening of an exhibition in the Naughton Gallery of Macedonian costume and photographs from the Benaki Museum Athens, the Gertrude Bell Collection Newcastle and the Wardle Collection Birmingham. After dinner there was a concert in the Harty Room by the Capella Romana brought from Seattle by Greece in Britain and a generous local donor: they packed the Barbican Hall last year and now entranced our symposium.

On Monday there were more communications, including Catherine Burns and Lorna Graham on Orange ceremony (noted in the Irish Times 12 July 2005) and Anne McCabe on polo, then a session on performativity at home (Peter Hatlie, Stavroula Constantinou and Stratis Papaioannou). A final lunch in the Great Hall made the opportunity to thank some of the people who helped most and then a session of performance and performativity on the streets (Bissera Pentcheva, Bente Bjørnholt and Nancy Ševčenko). All too soon, Bryer took over in the closing session and announced the International Congress of 2006, and remaining symposiasts returned to the Institute to await their taxis and an impromptu party.

Its success depended on many institutions and individuals. Without the support of the British Academy, the SPHS, the SPBS, the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Greece in Britain, and Easijet, nothing could have happened. And everyone in Institute and Centre contributed. Marie George with the help of Cathy Tolan bore the brunt of it, but communications organisers Anthony Hirst and Dirk Krausmüller; lecture room supremos Mark Jackson, Bente Bjørnholt and Stephen McCotter, and institute ‘housekeepers’ Pat Finlay, Eamon Manning and Alison Noble gave sterling service. A wonderful team of students (gaffers Ben Gregory and Andrew Campbell) were everywhere. Deep thanks go to Shan McAnena, Anne Stewart, Maria Vassilaki and the Wardles for the exhibitions, David Grant of the Drama department, Jan Smaczny in the School of Music, and Stella Hall and her staff in the Film and Drama Centre. What would a symposium on performances be without performances? Kathryn Baird as performances organiser was so successful that we are determined in future to repeat the performances without the symposium, with a festival in conjunction with Greece in Britain, to be called the Lagan Muses. And in 2007 Belfast students will once again look forward to travelling at Easter to the symposium at Birmingham.

22-23 March, 2005, Oxford: A small conference was held at University College, Oxford: 'Unities and Disunities in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean World'. It was organised by Catherine Holmes (University College, Oxford), Jonathan Harris (Royal Holloway College, London) and Kate Fleet (Newnham College, Cambridge). The conference brought together Byzantinists, Ottomanists and western medievalists to discuss new approaches to the history of the late medieval eastern Mediterranean world. Speakers included Colin Imber, Dimiter Angelov, Eurydice Georganteli, Chris Wright, David Abulafia, Julian Chrysostomides, Malgorzata Dabrowska, Aphrodite Papayianni, Judith Gilliland, Teresa Shawcross, David Jacoby, Robert Irwin and Jonathan Shepard. The organisers are planning to publish papers from the conference.

Le thème du colloque portait sur l'historiographie syriaque. Grâce à l'appui financier du conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada il fut possible d'inviter plusieurs chercheurs de l'étranger, dont Muriel Debié du CNRS (Paris), Jan van Ginkel (Leyde, Pays Bas) et Witold Witakowski (Uppsala, Suède). Les participants, environ une trentaine, vinrent pour la plupart d'Ottawa et de Toronto: on devrait souligner la présence du renommé professeur Tim Barnes de Toronto ainsi que celle de Sam Lieu, de l'université Macquarie à Sydney, Australie. Certains firent le voyage de Montréal et même de Regina pour y assister. Tous furent régalés par un déjeuner et des goûters servis et préparés par l'une de nos anciennes étudiantes, Yolande Rioux-St Cyr, assistée d'une équipe de collaborateurs. Les coûts de l'approvisionnement des participants furent assumés par le département, car les fonds du CRSH ne couvrent pas de telles dépenses.

Les premières conférences traitèrent principalement de l'œuvre d'Eusèbe de Césarée, surtout de sa Chronique et sa transmission en syriaque. Ainsi Richard Burgess, de l'université d'Ottawa, prononça une conférence sur «Reconstructing Eusebius: Neglected evidence from Ps.-Dionysius (the Zuqnin chronicle)»; son discours était bien illustré par des acétates de pages de manuscrits de la version latine de la chronique d'Eusèbe (produite par Jérôme). Muriel Debié discuta ensuite de «L'héritage de la chronique d'Eusèbe dans l'historiographie syriaque». Après une pause la troisième conférence fut donnée par Geoffrey Greatrex, de l'université d'Ottawa, sur «Pseudo-Zachariah of Mytilene: the context and nature of his work», une introduction à une œuvre complexe du VIe s. Suivit une pause pour le déjeuner après quoi on changea de thème: on lut à l'assistance la présentation d'Adil al-Jadir, anciennement professeur auxiliaire à l'université d'Ottawa et professeur titulaire à l'université de Baghdad, qui avait dû partir à Tunis deux semaines avant le colloque. Elle concerna «Numbers and dating formulae in the Old Syriac inscriptions» et représente une analyse très utile de l'épigraphie syriaque. Après une dernière pause, Jan van Ginkel retourna aux chroniqueurs syriaque par sa présentation qui eut pour thème «Michael the Syrian and his sources: Reflections on the methodology of Michael the Great as a historiographer and its implications for modern historians», un plaidoyer pour une attitude plus prudente à l'usage qu'on fait des extraits d'autres chroniques enfouis dans la grande chronique de Michel le Syrien. Malheureusement Witold Witakowski ne put assister au colloque à cause d'une malaise cardiaque; on espère toutefois qu'il pourra contribuer par le texte de sa conférence aux actes du colloque qui seront publiés dans le prochain numéro du Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies (pour 2006). Son absence fut compensée par la présence de Sam Lieu qui donna une présentation, très bien illustrée par des diapos, sur «Medieval Nestorian and Manichaean remains on the South China Coast», faisant part de ses propres travaux et fouilles dans la région; de nombreuses inscriptions de la région sont gravées en syriaque.

Back to Main Reports Page