Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Börje Bydén (Göteborg University)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

A very considerable part of the extant philosophical literature from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages consists of commentaries on the works of Aristotle. In the last decades, the study of the Late Antique commentaries (c. AD 160-620) has come to occupy a central place in the field of Ancient Philosophy. By contrast, the Byzantine commentaries (c. AD 900-1453) are still relatively little known. This is partly due to the fact that most of them have never been edited. The Late Antique commentaries are studied on the basis of the critical editions in the series Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, published by the Royal Prussian Academy at Berlin between 1882 and 1907. In 2007, a new series was launched in Berlin to complement and extend the CAG with editions mainly of Byzantine commentaries. This paper will first offer a bird's-eye view of the Byzantine commentary tradition, and eventually a light on a particular example: the commentary on Aristotle's De Anima by Theodore Metochites.

Börje Bydén received his Ph.D. in Ancient Greek from Göteborg University in 2002. Since then, he has been teaching and doing research in the Department of Classical Studies, Göteborg University; at the Byzantinisch-Neugriechisches Seminar, Freie Universität Berlin (STINT Fellowship, 2004-05); and at Dumbarton Oaks, where he is currently a Fellow. As of January 2008, he will be Assistant Professor of Greek in the Department of French, Italian and Classical Languages, Stockholm University. His research interests lie mainly in the field of ancient philosophy and its Nachleben, especially in the Byzantine period. He is currently editing Theodore Metochites's commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, for the new Berlin Series. [Last Updated 2007]

Jonathan Harris (Royal Holloway, University of London; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Heath Lowry (Department of Near Eastern Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

By 1394, the Byzantine Empire had lost most of its territory and its capital city of Constantinople was isolated and surrounded by land controlled by the Ottoman Turks. Yet the last century before the city’s fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 also saw some wide-ranging social changes as the people of Constantinople adapted to altered circumstances. One of those changes was the way in which the aristocracy, shorn of their estates outside Constantinople and with little hope of lucrative preferment at the bankrupt court, turned to commerce to maintain their wealth. This presentation will examine the repercussions of that shift and especially how it changed the relationship between these wealthy families and the interests and ideology of the empire. It will focus on some of the primary, archival evidence that has been used in the study so far.

Jonathan Harris is Reader in Byzantine History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He earned his B.A. in History at King’s College London in 1982. After teaching English in Turkey, he was awarded his M.A. (1988) and Ph.D. (1993) at the University of London. He was research fellow at University College London and visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College and King’s College London before moving to Royal Holloway in 1999. His first book was Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400-1520 (1995), followed by Byzantium and the Crusades (2003). His research interests lie in the middle and later periods of Byzantine history and he is currently working on a book about the last hundred years before the fall of Constantinople. [Last Updated 2007]

Artemis Leontis (University of Michigan)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

This talk will explore the untold story of the brief convergence of two remarkable women. Khorshed Naoroji, a Bombay Parsi student of Classical music in Paris and granddaughter of the first Indian member of British Parliament, had not found a way to explore her Hindu musical roots before she met Eva Palmer-Sikelianos in 1924. The American Palmer's own ear had first attuned itself to non-tempered music in Paris, where Palmer heard Penelope Sikelianos-Duncan sing nearly twenty years earlier. Palmer brought Naoroji to Greece for six months to study Byzantine notation. The two began a collaboration intended, according to Palmer, to make Byzantine musical notation and a special organ invented to play non-tempered music the centerpiece of an international school of non-western music. The dream remained unrealized after Palmer devoted herself completely to Angelos Sikelianos's "Delphic Plan," while Naoroji took her “Khadi” vows to become a follower of Ghandi. Naoroji's letters to Palmer bear witness to the transformative effect both Greece and Palmer exerted on her imagination. They also mark the moment when a westernized Indian embraced nativism while an American modernist found her most international voice – both by way of Greece.

Artemis Leontis is Associate Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Michigan. She has published essays on Greek culture in Greek and English. Her books are Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (Cornell University Press, 1995); Greece: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 1997), an edited volume of short stories by Greek authors; 'What These Ithakas Mean…' Readings in Cavafy (Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive, 2002), coedited with Lauren E. Talalay and Keith Taylor; and Culture and Customs of Greece (forthcoming). She has curated two exhibits: "Women's Fabric Arts in Greek America" (Columbus, Ohio, 1994) and "Cavafy's World" (University of Michigan, 2002). She is currently writing a book on Eva Palmer-Sikelianos. [Last Updated 2007]