Armenia & Byzantium without Borders, University of Vienna, April 20–22, 2018

Within the framework of ‘Moving Byzantium: Mobility, Microstructure and Personal Agency,’ a five-year project begun at the University of Vienna in 2016 and funded through the Wittgenstein-Prize, ‘Armenia & Byzantium without Borders’ is a three-day workshop focussing on social and cultural mobility between Armenia and Byzantium in the Middle Ages. This workshop continues a scholarly conversation initiated in March 2017 at the University of Uppsala where a study-day dedicated to ‘Narrative Exchanges between Byzantium and Armenia’ was organized by AnnaLinden Weller within the Uppsala/Paris ‘Text and Narrative in Byzantium’ project.

We invite advanced PhD candidates and early career scholars working in the fields of Late Antique, Armenian, Byzantine, and Middle Eastern Studies to submit proposals for 20 min. papers connected with the main topics of ‘Moving Byzantium’, with a focus on aspects of social and cultural mobility of persons, objects, and/or ideas between Armenia and Byzantium throughout the Middle Ages. We are particularly interested in new research showing interaction and communication on both literary and material grounds between the Byzantine world and the Armenians. Each paper presented at the workshop will be accompanied by a senior scholar’s 10 min. response, followed by a general discussion. The workshop will be inaugurated with the lecture of our keynote speaker, Prof. Bernard Coulie (Catholic University of Louvain), and will include a visit to the Mekhitarist Monastery of Vienna and a guided tour of the exhibition on ‘Byzantium and the West’ at the Schallaburg Castle.

Travel and accommodation expenses of scholars selected for presentation at the workshop will be covered by a generous grant of the ‘Moving Byzantium’ project.

Convenors: Dr. Emilio Bonfiglio and Prof. Claudia Rapp