IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1515: Sino-Byzantine Comparisons, Eurasian Entanglements, I: New Elites and New Learning?

Thursday 6 July 2023, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:	ERC Project 'Classicising Learning in Medieval Imperial Systems: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Byzantine Paideia & Tang/Song Xue' / Centre for Late Antique, Islamic & Byzantine Studies, University of Edinburgh
Organiser:	Curie Virág, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Moderator/Chair:	Niels H. Gaul, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest
Paper 1515-a	The Education of a New Elite: Academies and the Revival of Classical Learning in Northern Song China (Language: English) Linda Walton, Department of History, Portland State University, Oregon Index terms: Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Social History
Paper 1515-b	A New Learning for a New Elite?: Schools and Regional Networks in Constantinople during the Long 11th Century (Language: English) Niels H. Gaul, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Social History
Paper 1515-c	An Elite in Search of Its Classics: Christian and Non-Christian 'Classics' in 12th-Century Constantinopolitan Schools (Language: English) Foteini Spingou, Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Rhetoric
Abstract	The centralised Chinese and Byzantine empires at the far ends of Eurasia have become almost synonymous with their famed bureaucracies. The panel focuses on these intermediary elites as the latter expanded considerably from the second half of the 10th into the 11th centuries when both polities experienced a period of imperial consolidation. Papers explore new forms of schooling, patronage, centre-province interaction, and family and regional networks as well as new approaches to the classicising learning scholar-officials acquired as a means of social distinction, propagating empire and, not least, ethical 'self-cultivation'.