Last week, students from our department together with colleagues from the University of Vienna organized a conference entitled Otherness in Byzantium: Imagining, Encountering, Excluding. The conference approached the concept of otherness from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, it investigated how the Byzantines imagined an idealized self-identity, in a dialectic way, through the construction of the Other. This included exploring the strategies used by social groups to construct a self-perception distinct from outsiders. On the other hand, it addressed the issue of deconstructing our own gaze as scholars dealing with regions and peoples that have been historically otherized.
It opened with a keynote from Koray Durak from Boğaziçi University on Manifestations of Identity and Otherness in Byzantium and Byzantine Studies, which placed the central questions of the conference with a historiographical framework. This was followed by panels on identity in philosophy, literature and material culture. On the second day, the conference ended with a second keynote from Ingela Nilsson on Recognizing the Other in Byzantine Studies.
It was co-organized by graduate students of the Department of Historical Studies at the Central European University and the Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval Studies Cluster of the Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna: Ada Kök (Central European University), Alessandra Guido (University of Vienna), Dachi Pachulia (Central European University), Gunhyuk Lee (Central European University), Hans-Nikos Christoforakis (University of Vienna), Kassandra Cox (Central European University), Luidmila Eramova (University of Vienna), Marieke Verbiest (University of Vienna), Olga Vlachou (Central European University), Panagiotis Kouloukis (University of Vienna).