Papers are invited for the 17th Annual Postgraduate Colloquium at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Birmingham, due to take place on the 4th June 2016.
There are fashions in scholarship just as there are in costume or architecture, which means that certain topics are emphasised while others are marginalized. 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.
The colloquium “Redefining the Margins: Seeing the Unseen in the Eastern Mediterranean” 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. Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words no later than Thursday, 31st of March 2016 to Anna Kelley at [email protected]. Applicants will be notified of selection within two weeks of this date.
