On August 4-6, there will be a conference at Uppsala University titled “Reception Histories of the Future: Byzantinisms, Speculative Fiction and the Literary Heritage of Medieval Empire” organized by Dr. AnnaLinden Weller (you can see the program here).

Dr. Weller invited me to contribute, so I’ll be giving a talk by proxy that is a variation on my thoughts of the Akrítai and their unsung songs — with a brief sidebar about the millennia-long (and also fashionably erased) history of Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Black Sea.  You can find out more at this link, where I’ll be discussing comments, questions, and where I will eventually post my entire Powerpoint presentation.

Image: Persistent archetypes: the two byzantine images are warrior saints Merkoúrios (top left) and Artémios (bottom right), from a 13th-century fresco at Aghion Oros by Manouíl Pansélinos; the contemporary images are Ioan Gruffud as Lancelot in Fuqua’s King Arthur (top right) and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy (bottom left).