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On February 9\, 2023\, join t he UBC History Global Premodern Research Cluster for "From the Circus to th e Monastery: Changing Regimes of Punitive Blinding in Byzantium"\, a presen tation by Dr. Jake Ransohoff (SNF Centre for Hellenistic Studies\, SFU).
The Global Premodern Research Cluster was established to bring together a multidisciplinary community with shared and varied interests in global p remodern studies. It serves as a forum for faculty\, sessional and limited- term instructors\, postdoctoral fellows\, graduate students\, and intereste d undergraduate students affiliated across department at UBC as well as int erested participants beyond UBC. The Global PreModern Research Cluster conc eives of ‘premodern’ as global in its geographic breadth and flexibly rangi ng in its temporal scope from ancient times up to 1800 CE. The group embrac es a plurality of perspectives to the past and the evidence used to study t he past\, including textual\, material\, oral\, and visual sources.
T he Cluster is convened by Drs. Sara Ann Knutson\, John Christopoulos\, and Shoufu Yin. To be added to the mailing list or for other queries\, please c ontact Sara Ann Knutson at sa.knutson@ubc.ca.
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[image_s pread img_url="https://hist.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/202 3/01/Ransohoff-image.png" caption="Punitive blinding in Byzantium: a twelft h-century Byzantine illumination to the Life of Barlaam and Joasaph (King’s College\, Cambridge\, MS 45\, 97v" width="content"]
Blinding is among the hardiest perennials in the field of Byzantine p unitive practices. Often described as a “uniquely Byzantine” form of punish ment\, it served as the standard penalty for imperial rivals and defeated r ebels in Byzantium for over six centuries. Yet blinding’s longevity has obs cured some important changes in the methods\, frequency\, and venues of thi s gruesome practice. The present paper will focus on one such change in par ticular. It argues that a significant but unnoticed shift occurs in venues of corporal punishment at the end of Late Antiquity. Up to the eighth centu ry\, the disfigurement of imperial rivals played out in large public arenas such as the Hippodrome\, surrounded by elaborate spectacles of humiliation . After this point\, however\, mutilation largely moved out of the arena an d into prisons or monasteries\, hidden away from public view. This paper ma intains that changes in venues of punishment correlate with changes in regi mes of punishment: the rising frequency of blinding vis-à-vis other forms o f mutilation (such as nose- and hand-amputation) emerges in tandem with the shift of mutilation from open to closed space. These intertwined developme nts—so this paper hopes to show—raise important questions about relationshi p between punishment and imperial power across the transition from Late Ant iquity to medieval Byzantium.
[image_alig ned img_url="https://hist.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2023/ 01/Ransohoff-circle.jpg" caption="Jake Ransohoff" align="center"]
Jak e Ransohoff is currently the Hellenisms Past and Present\, Local and Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. He received his PhD in History from Ha rvard University in November 2022. His research focuses on disability\, soc ial exclusion\, and attitudes toward the body in Byzantium and the medieval Mediterranean. His wider interests include Late Roman and Byzantine urban archaeology\, plague in the Byzantine world\, and the study of Byzantium by early modern humanists. His co-edited volume\, The Invention of Byzant ium in Early Modern Europe\, was published in 2021 with Dumbarton Oaks Press.
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