Nature(s), Animals and Landscapes: Perception and Use of the Environment in Byzantium, 12th Edition of AEMB’s Byzantine Postgraduate Meetings, Paris, October 11–12, 2019

The 12th edition of the Byzantine Postgraduate Meetings of the Association des étudiants du monde byzantin étude byzantine (AEMB) will be held in Paris on October 11 and 12, 2019. Master’s students from Paris and international PhD candidates are kindly invited to submit a proposal on the topic “Nature(s), animals and landscapes: perception and use of the environment in Byzantium”.

From craggy rocks depicted on an icon to the animals of a Physiologos, from botanical knowledge to astrology, the Eastern Roman empire was populated by non-humans. Wild and domestic animals, plants, stars, seascapes and landscapes all created a setting for individuals to develop in. How did human actors infuse the multiple aspects of Creation with meaning? People have always had to adapt to the constraints of "Nature", interact with the environment so as to benefit from it, understand and predict the "whims" of climate and the ravages of diseases, and, finally, depict a world that, to them, was saturated with meaning and ordered through symbols and analogies.

What are the implications of "Nature"? The universalism of this concept, usually opposed to that of "Culture", is currently being challenged in the Humanities and Social Sciences, "Nature" being recognized as a specifically modern Western construct (P. Descola, Par-dela nature et culture, 2005). The aim of this year's Byzantine Postgraduate Meetings in Paris is to ask this very question in Byzantine context, in order to define and illustrate the various relations that the women and men of the Empire maintained with their surroundings.