4591 Architecture and identity in the Byzantine city

Meets: Tuesdays 1:00-3:30

Instructor: Fotini Kondyli

Email: fk8u@virginia.edu

Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:30-5:30 pm

Office Location: Fayerweather Hall- Office no. 310

 

                            

 

Course description:

This seminar explores the development of Byzantine cities in relation to Byzantium’s political and socio- economic structures (4^th-15^th c). It aims at examining cities as lived spaces, investigating their architecture and topography as well as a range of urban experiences from mundane daily deeds to public processions. Emphasis will also be placed on the different social groups responsible for the transformation of Byzantine urban spaces.

 

Course aims:

Byzantine cities are our point of departure but what the seminar is really about is people, people living in Byzantine cities. The main aim of the course is learning to reconstruct lived experiences in the Byzantine city by studying architecture, urban planning and byzantine monuments. The development of critical thinking in reading scholarly works and in exploring ideas in written essays is also a key aspect of the course. To provide the students with some hand-on experiences and a deeper understanding of the spatial dimension of Byzantine urban experiences, we will be using Neatline to reconstruct byzantine urban spaces. Another objective is to compare and contrast experiences in the Byzantine city with our own urban lives and modern cities, thus the course includes visits around the city of Charlottesville and an informal discourse on ancient and modern cities.

 

Requirements: No previous knowledge on Byzantine material culture is required. Students are responsible for doing the assigned reading before class and hand in their assignments on time.   All students are expected to follow the University Honor Code: http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/shorthistory/code.html.

 

Classroom decorum: Please maintain an appropriate decorum in class. Please ensure that your cell phone/pda/ipod/etc is turned off and silenced. If you use your laptop during class, please make sure you use it for class related purposes (i.e. note taking) and not for web surfing or social media. Please do not consume food prodigiously or noisily during class and please clean up after yourself when you leave the classroom.

Violence-free campus: As a faculty member I support a safe and violence-free campus. As your professor and as a person know that I care about you and your well-being and stand ready to provide support and resources as I can.

 

Evaluation scheme:

Final project:

• Presentations :10%

• Neatline project: 20%

• Final essay: 30%

Weekly presentations: 10%

Participation (including blog posts): 30%

 

Grading scheme:

A:       94-100                                         C+:   77-79                           D-:60-62

A- :    90-93                                            C:73-76                                F:0-59

B+:   87-89                                             C-:70-72

B:    83-86                                              D+:67-69

B-:     80-82                                            D: 63-66

 

 

Weekly readings and presentations:

Each week two students will be responsible to present the assigned readings for the week and lead a discussion. Presentations should include a discussion of the readings’ main points and a critical evaluation of their content, and should be accompanied by related images using a PowerPoint. Students responsible for the presentations should post a summary of the assigned readings on the class blog. Each week, all students who are not responsible for presenting, will also be expected to do the readings before class and post questions related to the readings in the blog. All students are expected to participate on the discussions in class (remember participation is 30% of your final grade!)

Blog: This course will use a UVA blog as a platform of communication between the students of the class as well as with the UVA community.  The blog is also meant as an engaging way for students to develop their writing skills and experience how their writing can be powerful, interesting to others and influential. Every week students responsible for the weekly presentations should post a summary of the assigned readings on the blog on Sundays before 5pm. All other students should post questions related to the weekly readings in the blog on Mondays before 8 pm. All students are expected to read fellow students’ posts and contribute weekly. Comments on blog posts count as participation and students will be graded based on their participation in the blog.

 

Final project ( Neatline, final presentation and essay):

The final project includes three parts. A neatline project, a presentation and an essay. At the beginning of the semester students (alone or in pairs) will choose and “adopt” a Byzantine city. Choice of adopted cities will be finalized by week 3. Every week at the last part of the seminar each student will work on their city, exploring the theme of the week and how they can talk about the theme using their city as a case study. For example if the theme of the week is  political landscapes, then each student will have 30-40 minutes at the end of the seminar to find information and consider what buildings and relations between buildings and other spaces can form a political landscape in their  adopted city. We will be working together in class on finding information, writing small-one page papers and building new information to the Neatline aspect of the project. This is meant to function as preparatory work for the final essay.

Potential topics for final projects will need to be discussed with me by March 10. Final topics will be reflecting one or more of the main themes discussed in class during the semester.

• Neatline projects (http://neatline.org/): Each student or student group will create a neatline for their adopted city. They will use neatline to map basic buildings and explore spatial relations in the city that relate to their final project. For example a student/student group might have adopted Constantinople as their city and they want to explore in their final project the city as a sacred space. They will use Neatline to map churches, monasteries and other buildings of interest, create map layers, use timelines to follow sacred spaces in time and explore how sacred spaces were formed. Training for Neatline and technical support will be provided. All Neatline projects must be completed and available for viewing by April 12, 9 pm.

 

• Final presentation: In the last three weeks of the semester, students will take turns to present their final projects. Each presentation should not be more than 20 minutes long. Students will be evaluated on the content, use of appropriate images in the accompanied PowerPoints, clarity, structure and presentation style. PowerPoint presentations should be uploaded on Collab on the same day the presentation is given.  

 

• Final essays: Topics for final essays will be agreed with me in advance and will be reflecting one or more of the main themes discussed in class during the semester. Adopted cities must be the central geographical focus or a main case study in the final essay. Final essays should be ca. 5000 words and must include appropriate citations and bibliography at the end. . For appropriate citation format look here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html. Topics for the final essay must be finalized on week 9 and one short paragraph description explaining the research question of the essay should be emailed to me by March 12: Outlines of essays should be emailed to me by March 27. Bibliographies used in the essays should be emailed to me by April 3. Final essay are due May 3, 9 pm.

 

Course structure:

Each seminar will start with the student presentations on the weekly assigned readings followed by discussion. All students are expected to participate in the discussion. Following the discussion I will be spending 10 minutes to introduce you to a new concept/theory/idea that you might find useful for next week’s theme and discussion.  The last 30 minutes will be spent working on the final projects or taking small field trips around Charlottesville.

 

Textbooks: All assigned readings will be available as pdf files and will be available on Collab.

 

Week 1- January 13

Introduction

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Week 2- January 20- Intro: Byzantine cities

C. Bouras, ‘Aspect of the Byzantine city. Eight-Fifteenth centuries’, pp.  497-528.

L. Lavan, ‘Late Antique Urban Topography’, pp. 171-195.

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Week 3- January 27- Urban planning

H. Sarandi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century, 148-185.

H. Buchwald, ‘Byzantine town planning- Does it exist?’, pp. 57-74.

Optional: S. Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, pp. 1-41.

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Week 4- February 3- Cities as places of memory and power

S. Basset, The urban image of late antique Constantinople pp. 17-37.

M. Georgopoulou, Venice’ Mediterranean Colonies, Chapter 3.

Optional: S. Alcock, ‘Reconfiguration of memory in the Eastern Roman Empire’, pp. 323-350.

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Week 5- February 10- Between past and future: layered cities

C. Bouras, ‘Byzantine Athens’ pp.  169-179 &  H. Thompson,  ‘Athenian Twilight: A.D. 267-600’, pp. 61-72.

M. Rautmam, ‘Sardis in Late Antiquity’, 1-26.

Optional: M. Crang and P.S. Travlou, ‘The city and topologies of memory’, pp. 161 – 177.

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Week 6- February 17- Approaches to the study of cities

P. Magdalino, ‘Medieval Constantinople: Built Environment and Urban Development’, pp. 529-537.

 R. Ousterhout, ‘Constantinople and the construction of a medieval urban identity’, pp. 334-349.

Optional:

I. Manners, 'Constructing the Image of a city: The representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum Archipelagi', pp. 72-102.

I. Calvino, Invisible Cities

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Week 7- February 24 -The city as a stage

A. Berger, ‘Imperial and ecclesiastic processions in Constantinople’, pp. 73-89.

H. W. Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,pp. 65-68, 89-119.

Optional: T.  Inomata, Takeshi, et al. ‘Plazas, performers, and spectators: political theaters of the Classic Maya’, pp.  805-842.

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Week 8- March 3- Sacred spaces in the city

H. Sarandi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century, pp. 385-440.

R. Ousterhout, ‘Sacred Geographies and Holy Cities: Constantinople as Jerusalem’, pp. 1-19.

Optional: L. Kong, ‘Negotiating conceptions of' sacred space': a case study of religious buildings in Singapore’, pp. 342-358.

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Week 9- March 10

Spring Break

Deadline for the final essay topic. One paragraph description and main research question: March 12.

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Week 10- March 17- Domestic spaces

 

A. Rabinowitz, ‘Daily life in a provincial Late Byzantine city: recent multidisciplinary research in the South Region of Chersonesos’, pp. 425-454.

K. Dark, ‘Houses, streets and public spaces in Constantinople from the fifth to twelve centuries’, pp. 83-107.

Optional: A. V. James & L. Kalisperis, ‘Use of House and Space: Public and Private Family Interaction on Chios, Greece’, pp. 205-222.

 

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Week 11- March 24- Public spaces

E. Ivison, ‘Amorium in the Byzantine Dark Ages (Seventh to Ninth Centuries)’, pp. 25–60.

H. Sarandi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century, 294-324.

 

Deadline for the outline of the essay: March 27.

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Week 12- March 31 Cities as economic landscapes

A. Louvi-Kizi, ‘Thebes’, pp. 631-638.

M. Mango, ‘The commercial map of Constantinople’, pp. 189-207.

 

 

Deadline for final essay bibliography: April 3

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Week 13- April 7- The role of patronage

E. Drakopoulou, Kastoria: Art, patronage and society’, pp.  114-125  & S. Kalopisi-Verti , ‘Mistra: A Late Byzantine fortified settlement’, pp. 224-239.

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Week 14- April 14

Student presentations

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Week 15- April 21

Student presentations

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Week 16- April 28

Student presentations

 

 

 

 

Course description:

This seminar explores the development of Byzantine cities in relation to Byzantium’s political and socio- economic structures (4^th-15^th c). It aims at examining cities as lived spaces, investigating their architecture and topography as well as a range of urban experiences from mundane daily deeds to public processions. Emphasis will also be placed on the different social groups responsible for the transformation of Byzantine urban spaces.

 

Course aims:

Byzantine cities are our point of departure but what the seminar is really about is people, people living in Byzantine cities. The main aim of the course is learning to reconstruct lived experiences in the Byzantine city by studying architecture, urban planning and byzantine monuments. The development of critical thinking in reading scholarly works and in exploring ideas in written essays is also a key aspect of the course. To provide the students with some hand-on experiences and a deeper understanding of the spatial dimension of Byzantine urban experiences, we will be using Neatline to reconstruct byzantine urban spaces. Another objective is to compare and contrast experiences in the Byzantine city with our own urban lives and modern cities, thus the course includes visits around the city of Charlottesville and an informal discourse on ancient and modern cities.

 

Requirements: No previous knowledge on Byzantine material culture is required. Students are responsible for doing the assigned reading before class and hand in their assignments on time.   All students are expected to follow the University Honor Code: http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/shorthistory/code.html.