Learning outcomes: The learning outcomes aim at familiarizing the students with the political, social, and cultural context of the historical ruptures and changes. Main objectives of the seminar are the problematization of the relations between the past and the present and the critique of schematic genealogical approaches or periodizations of the historical time. Moreover, students become acquainted with analytical categories and research tools of historiography. They familiarize themselves with the techniques of both bibliographical research and the writing of a historical essay, thus enriching their knowledge and developing their analytical and synthetic skills.
General Competences:
- Search for, analysis and synthesis of data and information, with the use of the necessary technology.
- Working independently.
- Criticism and self-criticism.
- Production of free, creative and inductive thinking.
The fall of Constantinople in 1204 was a deep rupture in the history of the Byzantine world. Main features of the post-1204 period were the political fragmentation, the emergence of new systems for the distribution of power, a redeployment of the economic networks and the western colonization, mainly in the southern Balkans and the Aegean. These changes will be analysed during the seminar until the middle of the 15th century. Particular emphasis will be given to the historiographical discussions about the social and economic changes, the discourses on identity and otherness, and the processes through which new political entities came into being.
Moreover, 1204 was experienced by members of the byzantine elite as a “liminal” event that created the need for new narratives which redefined the horizons of expectations of their readers. At the level of microhistory, the personal choices, strategies and worldviews of some intellectuals, emperors and patriarchs of the time will be explored.
Course units:
- Introduction to the history of the late Byzantine world (13th – 15th centuries).
- Recent historiographical approaches and debates.
- The late Byzantine economy and the commercial networks of the Mediterranean world.
- Transformations of the networks of political power.
- Continuities and ruptures in political thought and practice.
- The political, economic, and social construction of urban space.
- Urban revolts.
- The rural
- Identities and alterities after 1204: The recent historiographical debate.
- Images of the “others”: The interaction with the westerners and the Ottomans.
- The views of the Byzantine historians and chronographers
- D. Angelov, Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204-1330, Cambridge 2007.
- M. Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile: Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicaea (1204-1261), Oxford 1974.
- M. Angold, Η τέταρτη σταυροφορία, trans. Α. Κονδύλης, Αθήνα 2006.
- J. Herrin – G. Saint-Guillain, ed., Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, Farnham 2011.
- A. Kaldellis, Romanland. Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Cambridge Mass. 2019.
- S. Karpov, Ιστορία της αυτοκρατορίας της Τραπεζούντας, trans. E. Kritsefkaya – Α. Ευσταθίου, Αθήνα 2017.
- Τ. Κιουσοπούλου, Βασιλεύς ή Οικονόμος; Πολιτική εξουσία και ιδεολογία πριν την Άλωση, Αθήνα 2007.
- Τ. Κιουσοπούλου, Οι αόρατες βυζαντινές πόλεις στον ελλαδικό χώρο (13ος – 15ος αι.), Αθήνα 2013.
- Α. Ε. Λαΐου – C. Morrisson, Η Βυζαντινή Οικονομία, trans. Δ. Κυρίτσης, Αθήνα 2011.
- N. Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins, Cambridge 2009.
- D. M. Nicol, The Despotate of Epiros, τ. 1-2, Oxford – Cambridge 1957 – 1984.
- D. Nicol, Το Δεσποτάτο της Ηπείρου (1267-1479), Αθήνα 1991.
- G. Page, Being Byzantine. Greek Identity before the Ottomans, Cambridge 2008.
- T. Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea. Historiography in Crusader Greece, Oxford 2009.
- Γ. Σμαρνάκης, Βυζαντινή Αναγέννηση και Ουτοπία. Ο Πλήθων και το δεσποτάτο του Μοριά, Αθήνα 2017.
- I. Stouraitis, “Roman Identity in Byzantium: a critical approach”, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 107/1 (2014), 175-220.
Related academic journals:
- Βυζαντινά
- Βυζαντινά Σύμμεικτα
- Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
- Byzantinische Zeitschrift
- Byzantinoslavica
- Byzantion
- Dumbarton Oaks Papers
- Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik
- Revue des Études Byzantines
- Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici
- Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
