Redefining the Margins: Seeing the Unseen in the Eastern Mediterranean, 17th Annual Postgraduate Colloquium, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, June 4, 2016

Papers are invited for the 17th Annual Postgraduate Colloquium at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies. There are fashions in scholarship just as there are in costume or architecture, which means that certain topics are emphasised while others are marginalised. For example, 25 years ago a huge proportion of Byzantine art historical scholarship was devoted to illuminated manuscripts; today this is a much smaller field of study. This colloquium will focus on those ‘lost’ subjects, or subjects that never held the spotlight. We are interested in ‘peripheries’ of all sorts, including more traditional forms of marginalisation. The act of ‘marginalisation’ has been perpetuated and experienced in societies throughout the world: to construct the ‘other’, to classify as ‘fringe’ or outside the ‘mainstream’, to define and to diminish borders, populations, cultures and ideas, both with or without intention.

Papers of approximately 20 minutes in any of the fields related to Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies are welcome.

Limited bursaries to help with travel costs of speakers are available.