Rethinking Empire

Byzantine Spring Symposium

Dumbarton Oaks
April 2017

Thursday, April 20, 2017

6:006:45 p.m. Cocktails in the Orangery

6:459:00 Speakers Dinner in the Orangery

Friday, April 21, 2017

8:30 a.m. Morning Registration and Coffee

9:009.15 Welcome: Elena Boeck

9:159:45 Introduction
Paul Magdalino & Dimiter Angelov
Defining Empire

The Roman and late antique matrix

9:4510:30 a.m. Emma Dench, Learning from the Past, Learning from the Future: Contemporary
Approaches to the Earlier Roman Empire

10:3011:00 Coffee

11:00-11:45 Sylvain Destephen, From Moving Center to Centralization: The Foundations of

Byzantine Imperial Government

11:4512:15 p.m. Discussion

12:152:00 Lunch

Territoriality and ethnicity

2:002:45 John Haldon, Empire and Territory: Perceptions and Realities

2:453:30 Vivien Prigent, One for All, All for One? Provincial Elites and the Empire

3:304:00 Coffee

4:004:45 Anthony Kaldellis, Was Byzantium a Multiethnic Empire?

4:455:30 Commentator: Michael McCormick

Discussion

5:307:30 Reception in the Orangery

Saturday, April 22, 2017

8:30 a.m. Morning Registration and Coffee

Early medieval empires in the Roman world

9:009:45 Jennifer Davis, Rethinking Empire: The Carolingian Perspective

9:4510:30 Angel Nikolov, The Imperial Project of Symeon I of Bulgaria (893927): Byzantine
Frameworks and Aftermath

10:3011:00 Coffee

Byzantiums culture of empire

11:0011:45 Niels Gaul, Recording, Writing, and Enacting Empire: Officeholders as Agents of
Empire in the Middle and Later Byzantine Periods

11:4512:30 p.m. Annabel Wharton, Imperial Peripheries and Holy Sepulchres

12:302:15 Lunch

Comparative contexts

2:153:00 Cemal Kafadar, The Long and Winding Road to Empire: The Sublime State from the
Late Fourteenth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century

3:003:45 Michael Puett, Comparative Reflections on Empires in Chinese Late Antiquity

3:454:15 Coffee

Concluding paper

4:155:00 Paul Magdalino, Rethinking Theocracy

5:006:00 Commentator: Maya Jasanoff