Byzantium/Modernism

This video contains Marie-José Mondzain's keynote lecture at the Byzantium/Modernism Symposium. Her presentation is an analysis of early-Christian image theory and the doctrine of the incarnation manifested in the work of the Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky. This talk was translated by Annabel L. Kim, a doctoral candidate in the French Department at Yale University.

This paper was delivered by Stratis Papaioannou at the Byzantine/Modernism Symposium in a panel entitled, "Byzantine Subjectivity in Modernity," which also included a paper by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and was chaired by Roland Betancourt. Professor Papaioannou's paper analyzes the (mis-)reading of Byzantine self-referential writing in Georg Misch’s Geschichte der Autobiographie, the first volume of which appeared in 1907. Misch's volumes purported to provide a universal history and genealogy of modern subjectivity, expanding traditions of thought that were to be continued as well as radically challenged by the various modernist movements.

What does modern art have to gain from Byzantium? What does Byzantine art have to gain from modernism? How can Byzantine philosophy enrich our understanding of the modern and contemporary image? In this introduction to the Byzantium/Modernism Symposium, conference co-chair Roland Betancourt addresses these questions in the context of modern and byzantine art history.

What does modern art have to gain from Byzantium? How can Byzantine philosophy enrich our understanding of the modern and contemporary image? This video presents opening remarks and acknowledgments by co-chair Maria Taroutina for the Byzantium/Modernism Symposium.