Race in the Archives (Primary Source Symposium)

 

In Byzantine texts narrating the lives of certain male monks, who had been assigned female at birth, there is often mention that at the end of their stories that they had not only taken on a series of masculine physical characteristics, but also that their skin had darkened and that they appeared as an "Ethiopian." This language emerges from a broader association of dark skin with masculinity seen across a host of Byzantine texts. This paper explores how processes of racialization are interlaced with notions of gender in these sources.

 

Roland Betancourt is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2016-2017 academic year, he was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Betancourt's work has looked at the role of Byzantine art in modern and contemporary art and popular culture, as in his edited volume Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2015). His first monograph Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) proposes a new understanding of theories of vision in the ancient Greek and Byzantine worlds by distancing sight from touch and placing a central focus on the workings of the imagination. He is also the author of a forthcoming book Byzantine Intersectionality on the intersection of race, sexuality, and gender identity in the medieval world, and another book on the recitation and performance of the Gospel in the Divine Liturgy, looking at relationships between words and images in manuscripts and in the space of the Byzantine church.

His research also covers contemporary concerns, including an interest in new media, online culture, and fandom (i.e. YouTube and YouTubers) as well as an ongoing book project on simulacral spaces and theme parks (i.e. Las Vegas and Disneyland).

 

Discussant: Pamela A. Patton (Princeton University)