Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

58 Prospect Avenue, Room 107

This talk will consider how foreign success was used domestically by the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, charting a fundamental shift in the nature of Byzantine society and of the Empire's internal politics in the late 11th and early 12th Centuries. The reign of Alexios I Komnenos saw some of the most important developments, not only in the history of the Byzantine Empire, but in the medieval Mediterranean as a whole. The Norman attacks on Epirus which were to become a feature of the 12th Century, began soon after Alexios had seized the throne; the Seljuk penetration of Asia Minor which was to bring to an end Byzantine rule over much of Anatolia can be dated to this period; in spite of the date of 1054 which is traditionally given to the Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, it was in the reign of Alexios I that the two halves of the ancient Roman world were finally and decisively split in two; this period saw a key stage in the socio-political definition of the Balkans; and of course, it also saw the First Crusade, perhaps the defining moment in the history of medieval Europe as a whole, where thousands of armed men traveled through Byzantium to Jerusalem in the hope of liberating the Holy Places. While the Pope played a crucial role in the dissemination and organization of this phenomenon, the origins of this movement were eastern, and specifically Byzantine in origin and can be traced back to Alexios I Komnenos personally.

PETER DOIMI de FRANKOPAN studied at Cambridge University, graduating with a First class degree in History. He moved to Oxford, where he received a M.Phil. in Byzantine Studies before completing his D.Phil. with his dissertation on the reign of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He moved from Senior Scholar at Corpus Christi College to Worcester College, first as a Junior Research Fellow (1997) and then as Senior Research Fellow (2000). His interests span the history of the Byzantine Empire from the 9th-13th Centuries, with a particular focus on Byzantium's relations with the Rus, the Bulgars, with Islam and with the West. His doctoral and post-doctoral research has been centered on the Komnenian dynasty, examining the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Seljuk and Turkoman expansion in Asia Minor, the Byzantine and the eastern context(s) for the First Crusade, the final schisms between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, and the social and political evolution of the Balkans from 1081-1118. Byzantine literature in the 11th-12th Centuries, power and kinship in Byzantium and the question of heresy in the early medieval Mediterranean are all additional research interests. He is currently in the latter stages of completing a monograph on Alexios I Komnenos. [Last Updated 2002]

Group for the Study of Late Antiquity Seminar
Arietta Papaconstantinou (Centre d'histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Paris)
211 Dickinson Hall

Emmet Gowin (Program in Visual Arts, Princeton University)
58 Prospect, Room 107

In this informal talk with color slides I wish to share the scenes and details of my first experiences of Crete. I hope also to locate this work of two weeks of great peace and solitude within the context of the ongoing images, some of which were just published by Yale University Press as "Changing the Earth." A camera loaded with 35mm color film has always been a part of my family's life and outings, especially when absorbing the atmosphere of a country visited for the first time. We have always referred to these photos as our own "National Geographic." They may be more or less than that, but they embrace us with our own fingerprint and the aroma of our own vision.

EMMET GOWIN, born in Danville, Virginia in 1941, is Professor of Photography in the Council of the Humanities, Princeton University, and has been teaching in the Visual Arts Program since 1973. In 1990, a retrospective of his work, "Emmet Gowin / Photographs: This Vegetable Earth is but a Shadow," was published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A recipient of a Guggenheim (1974) and two NEA Fellowships (1977 and 1979); he has also received awards from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (1983), the Seattle Arts Commission (1980); the 1983 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts from the State of Pennsylvania; the 1992 Friends of Photography Peer Award; and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for 1993-94. His work is represented by Pace MacGill Gallery in New York. His most recent book, "Changing the Earth," was published by Yale University Press, and this exhibition is now at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, through Jan. 6, 2003. [Last Updated 2002]