Ann Marie Yasin is an Associate Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Southern California specializing in the architecture and material culture of the Roman and late antique world. [1] She studies materiality, built-environments, landscapes, and urbanism as they pertain to the ancient and late ancient religious worlds. [2]
In 1993, Yasin earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, where she majored in Classical Archaeology and History of Art. In 1995, she received her Master of Arts in Art History from the University of Chicago with her thesis The Vienna Dioscorides: A Late Antique Document of Social Exchange. In 2002, she earned her Ph.D. in Art History, also from the University of Chicago. Her doctoral thesis was titled: Commemorating the Dead – Constructing the Community: Church Space, Funerary Monuments and Saints' Cults in Late Antiquity. [3]
In 1997 and 1998, Yasin served as a lecturer at the University of Chicago; she continued as a lecturer here in 2001. In 2000, Yasin was the Assistant Director of the Classical Summer School at the American Academy in Rome. Between 2002 and 2005, Yasin taught at Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor in both the Department of Art History and a joint-appointment in the Department of Classics. Since 2005, Yasin has worked at the University of Southern California in the departments of Classics and Art History, advancing from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor in 2009.[ citation needed ] Yasin was a member of the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship Program in 2018. [1]
She published her first book Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community in 2009, discussing the creation of sacred spaces through both lay and clerical actors alike during the fourth and seventh centuries. [4]
Yasin has served as an Associate Editor and the Exhibition Reviews Editor for the journal Studies in Late Antiquity since 2016. [5] [2]
Yasin, Ann Marie. Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (Greek Culture in the Roman World). Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0521767835
Byzantine art comprises the body of artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of western Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Islamic states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward.
Dumbarton Oaks, formally the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was the residence and gardens of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss. The estate was founded by the Bliss couple, who gave the home and gardens to Harvard University in 1940.
Spolia are stones taken from an old structure and repurposed for new construction or decorative purposes. It is the result of an ancient and widespread practice (spoliation) whereby stone that has been quarried, cut and used in a built structure is carried away to be used elsewhere. The practice is of particular interest to historians, archaeologists and architectural historians since the gravestones, monuments and architectural fragments of antiquity are frequently found embedded in structures built centuries or millennia later. The archaeologist Philip A. Barker gives the example of a late Roman period tombstone from Wroxeter that could be seen to have been cut down and undergone weathering while it was in use as part of an exterior wall and, possibly as late as the 5th century, reinscribed for reuse as a tombstone.
Macedonian art is the art of the Macedonian Renaissance in Byzantine art style. The period in which the art was produced, the Macedonian Renaissance, followed the end of the Byzantine iconoclasm era lasting from 867-1056, concluding with the fall of the Macedonian dynasty. The advent of the Macedonian Empire allowed for a new era of Byzantium revival where many aspects of the empire flourished including quality of life, art, architecture, technology, and military prowess, ultimately leading to the empires Medieval peak. This Macedonian era of the Byzantine empire was so prosperous it is considered the empire's Golden Age. Additionally the empire coincided with the Ottonian Renaissance in Western Europe.
Hosios Loukas is a historic walled monastery situated near the town of Distomo, in Boeotia, Greece. Founded in the mid-10th century, the monastery is one of the most important monuments of Middle Byzantine architecture and art, and has been listed on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites since 1990, along with the monasteries of Nea Moni and Daphnion.
Ernst KitzingerFBA was a German-American historian of late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine art.
A cross-in-square or crossed-dome plan was the dominant architectural form of middle- and late-period Byzantine churches. It featured a square centre with an internal structure shaped like a cross, topped by a dome.
Judith Herrin is an English archaeologist, byzantinist, and historian of Late Antiquity. She was a professor of Late Antique and Byzantine studies and the Constantine Leventis Senior Research Fellow at King's College London.
Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, demography, dress, religion/theology, art, literature/epigraphy, music, science, economy, coinage and politics of the Eastern Roman Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus Wolf (1516–1580), a Renaissance Humanist. He gave the name "Byzantine" to the Eastern Roman Empire that continued after the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD. About 100 years after the final conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, Wolf began to collect, edit, and translate the writings of Byzantine philosophers. Other 16th-century humanists introduced Byzantine studies to Holland and Italy. The subject may also be called Byzantinology or Byzantology, although these terms are usually found in English translations of original non-English sources. A scholar of Byzantine studies is called a Byzantinist.
The Church of St. Polyeuctus was an ancient Byzantine church in Constantinople built by the noblewoman Anicia Juliana and dedicated to Saint Polyeuctus. Intended as an assertion of Juliana's own imperial lineage, it was a lavishly decorated building, and the largest church of the city before the construction of the Hagia Sophia. It introduced the large-scale use of Sassanid Persian decorative elements, and may have inaugurated the new architectural type of domed basilica, perfected in the later Hagia Sophia.
Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai is an eighth- to ninth-century Byzantine text that concentrates on brief commentary connected to the topography of Constantinople and its monuments, notably its Classical Greek sculpture, for which it has been mined by art historians.
The Monza ampullae form the largest collection of a specific type of Early Medieval pilgrimage ampullae or small flasks designed to hold holy oil from pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land related to the life of Jesus. They were made in Palestine, probably in the fifth to early seventh centuries, and have been in the Treasury of Monza Cathedral north of Milan in Italy since they were donated by Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards,. Since the great majority of surviving examples of such flasks are those in the Monza group, the term may be used to cover this type of object in general.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Byzantine Empire:
Greece played a crucial role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world. Its rich historiographical tradition preserved Ancient Greek knowledge upon which Islamic art, architecture, literature, philosophy and technological achievements were built. Ibn Khaldun once noted; The sciences of only one nation, the Greeks, have come down to us, because they were translated through Al-Ma'mun’s efforts. He was successful in this direction because he had many translators at his disposal and spent much money in this connection.
Doula Mouriki was a Greek Byzantinologist and art historian. She made important contributions to the study of Byzantine art in Greece.
Leslie Brubaker is an expert in Byzantine illustrated manuscripts. She was appointed Professor of Byzantine Art at the University of Birmingham in 2005, and is now Professor Emerita. Her research interests includes female patronage, icons and the cult of the Virgin Mary. She was formerly the head of Postgraduate Studies in the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham. Professor Brubaker is the Chair of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Her work is widely stocked in libraries around the world.
Arietta Papaconstantinou is Reader in Classics at the University of Reading and Associate Faculty Member in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is an expert in the religious, social and economic history of Egypt and the Near East during the transition from the Roman Empire to the Caliphate.
Alice-Mary Talbot is an American Byzantinist. She is director of Byzantine studies emerita, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
In the Byzantine Empire, cities were centers of economic and cultural life. A significant part of the cities were founded during the period of Greek and Roman antiquity. The largest of them were Constantinople, Alexandria, Thessaloniki and Antioch, with a population of several hundred thousand people. Large provincial centers had a population of up to 50,000. Although the spread of Christianity negatively affected urban institutions, in general, late antique cities continued to develop continuously. Byzantium remained an empire of cities, although the urban space had changed a lot. If the Greco-Roman city was a place of pagan worship and sports events, theatrical performances and chariot races, the residence of officials and judges, then the Byzantine city was primarily a religious center where the bishop's residence was located.