Identities and Ideologies in the Medieval East Roman World

Identities and Ideologies in the Medieval East Roman World (Edinburgh UP, 2022) examines ideas, beliefs and practices of identification in the medieval East Roman world

• Approaches ideology and identity in the Byzantine world from different perspectives, top-down, bottom-up, and outside-in, and from various disciplinary perspectives including historical, literary, art-historical and archaeological.

• Explores what makes discourses ideological by giving them a central function in the promotion of power relations and interests on the macro-level of society as well as on the micro-level of certain social groups.

• Explores the interrelation between dominant imperial ideology and collective identification.

• Scrutinizes various kinds of identification, local-regional, religious, gender, class, ethno-cultural and regnal-political.

• Contributors include Leslie Brubaker, Kostis Smyrlis, Alicia Simpson and Dionysios Sthathakopoulos.

This collection offers new insights into ideology and identity in the Byzantine world. The range of international contributors explore the content and role of various ideological discourses in shaping the relationship between the imperial centre and the provinces. Crucially, they examine various kinds of collective identifications and visions of community in the broader Byzantine world within and beyond the political boundaries of the empire.

This interdisciplinary collection includes historical, literary, art-historical and archaeological as well as cross-cultural perspectives along with the exploration of ideas and identifications in cultures on the empire’s periphery.

Dr. Yannis Stouraitis is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine History, University of Edinburgh. He specializes in Byzantine social and cultural history, focusing on the socio-ideological aspects of war, collective identifications and ideological attachments and the construction of historical memory. He is the author of Krieg und Frieden in der politischen und ideologischen Wahrnehmung in Byzanz (Byzantinische Geschichtsschreiber, Erganzungsband, 2009). He is editor of A Companion to the Byzantine Culture of War, c. 300-1204 (Brill, forthcoming 2018) and he is co-editor of Byzantine War Ideology between Roman Imperial Concept and Christian Religion (Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (2012).

This episode is part of the NBN's Byzantine Studies series organized by Evan Zarkadas.

Evan Zarkadas (MA) is an independent scholar of European and Medieval history and an educator. He received his master’s in history from the University of Maine focusing on Medieval Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, medieval identity, and ethnicity during the late Middle Ages.