Tekijä: maijastina

Tänään tasan kaksikymmentä vuotta sitten tein ensimmäisen kirjoituksen blogiini. Kaksikymmentä vuotta sitten oli maailmalla blogien kultakausi. Ne alkoivat vakiintua internetissä 1990-luvun puolivälin jälkeen. Blogit saivat alkunsa internetissä on-line-päiväkirjoina (on-line diaries). Blogi-nimitys muotoutui lyhenteenä sanasta weblog (joka taas ilmaantui vuonna 1997). Blogeja syntyi, kukoisti ja kuoli. Sittemmin tilanne on tasaantunut. Blogi-kirjoittaminen on saanut muita kilpailijoita, mutta uskoisin, että blogikirjoittamisella on edelleen paikkansa viestinnässä. Se on rauhallinen tapa viestiä.

Aluksi saatoin julkaista jopa 3–4 kertaa kuukaudessa. Kaikkein hulluin kausi oli joulukuussa 2016, kun hetkellisen mielenhäiriön vallassa aloin julkaista ”Kirjallista joulukalenteria” eli bloggasin jostakin kirjasta joka päivä – joulukalenterin 24 luukkua. Se oli ehkä liikaa. Nykyään blogijulkaisuja näyttää tulevan 1-2 kertaa kuukaudessa, ja osa niistä liittyy podcasteihini. Vuonna 2022 minusta tuli myös podcastaaja.

Minusta tuli blogin kirjoittaja, koska tavoitteenani oli tehdä historian perustutkimusta tunnetuksi suurelle yleisölle. Olen aina halunnut kertoa tutkimuksestani veronmaksajille, jotka viime kädessä ovat olleet tutkimukseni rahoittajia. Minulla oli ajatus siitä, että blogi on myös tapa raportoida tutkimuksistani, siitä, mitä teen, mitä julkaisen ja mitä esitelmöin. Joistakin postauksista tuli eräänlaisia väliraportteja tutkimus- ja kirjoitusprojekteista, välillä henkilökohtaisia ja samalla yleismaailmallisia (esim. että kirjoittaminen on tuskaa). Blogipostauksiin liittyy myös keskeneräisyys – ne ovat raportteja keskellä tekemisen prosessia.

Blogini decennalian eli kymmenvuotisjuhlan merkiessä totesin: ”Historian tutkiminen ja kirjoittaminen on tuskastuttavan vaikeaa, mutta samalla mahtavinta mitä tähän mennessä olen keksinyt. Suunnitelma seuraavalle kymmenvuotiskaudelle on jatkaa tätä eteenpäin.” Sama suunnitelma pätee seuraavalle kymmenvuotiskaudelle.

I am happy to announce that Marking the North. The Greek Tradition and its Influence in the Roman Period, edited by Antti Lampinen, has just been published. The volume appears in the series Papers and Monographs of the Finnish Institute at Athens (PMFIA).

The origins of the volume lie in the international workshop Markers of Northernness in Greek Ethnography and Geography, that was held on 10–11 December 2022 at the Finnish Institute at Athens. I am happy to along, with my contribution on the gigantomachia imagery in Late Antiquity. As you can see from the blog start image above, the volume cover is the coolest cover ever, by Karin Eremia.

The impressive contents of the volume:

Antti Lampinen Introduction: Marking the North in the Greek Tradition
Serena Bianchetti The Insular North: A Long-Unknown Reality
Despoina Tsiafaki Recognising Thracians: Tattoos as an Ethnic Marker
Antti Lampinen Polyphemus, Galatea, Herakles: Myths of Origin for Northerners
Joanna Porucznik Northern Women in Greek and Roman Thought
Ekaterina Ilyushechkina A Scythian Mirage in the Collectanea of Gaius Iulius Solinus
Maia Kotrosits From Herodotus to Heresy: Scythians in Long Historical Perspective
Antti Lampinen The Formation of the Greek Image of ‘Northern’ Religions: A Diachronic Account
Julian Gieseke On either Side of the Wall: The Dynamic Image of the British Isles from Caesar to the Arrival of the Anglo- Saxons
Maijastina Kahlos From Gigantomachia to Mission Possible: Late Roman Visions of Northern Barbarians
Cédrik Michel Broadcasting Imperial Policy about the Goths: Theodosius’ Torque-Wearing Bodyguards.

My book Barbarians as the Religious Other in the Late Roman World has just been published by Edinburgh University Press.

In a post on the Edinburgh University Press blog, I reflect on the book’s central arguments and on how it came to be written. Find out here.

I am happy to announce that the Companion to Rome (c. 400–c. 1050), edited by Caroline Goodson and Julia Hillner, has just been published. The volume appears with Brill in the series Brill’s Companions to European History. Caroline and Julia have accomplished a remarkable feat: two volumes, 33 chapters, and 32 contributors. Macte virtute! I am happy and honoured to be among the contributors to this opus magnum. My own contribution is Chapter 19, on religious communities in Late Antique Rome.

The rationale of the Companion to Rome: “The city of Rome had a remarkable and complex urban continuity even after antiquity and it provided a model of urban living for other cities throughout the Middle Ages. Much existing research has nevertheless focused instead on Rome as the seat of papal power or as an influential idea rather than a real place. This volume radically refocuses our attention on Rome’s inhabitants, their identities, relationships, institutions, experiences, agencies, and spaces, and on how these local aspects interacted with the city’s universal character. It also bridges two periods of the history of Rome that are typically separated, namely late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, through a unique design of mirrored essays on key themes of Rome’s urban history. This volume brings to an Anglophone audience new scholarship from scholars across Europe and America.”

Contributors are: Margaret Andrews, Shane Bobrycki, Giulia Bordi, François Bougard, Samuel Cohen, Marios Costambeys, Joseph Dyer, Clemens Gantner, Caroline Goodson, Robert Heffron, Julia Hillner, Mark Humphries, Paul Johnson, Maijastina Kahlos, Paolo Liverani, Markus Löx, Carlos Machado, Federico Marazzi, Maya Maskarinec, Silvia Orlandi, Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, Kristina Sessa, Lucrezia Spera, Francesca Romana Stasolla, Michela Stefani, Francesca Tinti, Dennis Trout, Andrea Verardi, Massimiliano Vitiello, Giorgia Vocino, Veronica West Harling, and Sarah Whitten.

Christmas is a time for presents, and this year we have a particularly welcome one. A forthcoming volume of articles, Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Studies from Western Europe and North Africa, edited by Éric Fournier and me, will be published early next year.

The volume will appear in the prestigious series Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (CELAMA), volume 44, published by Brepols. It is a gift not only to us as editors, but also to all the contributors who made the project possible.

This collection of essays examines the lives of women of all classes during the centuries during and after the ‘fall of Rome’ across the various ‘Barbarian’ kingdoms of the Western Mediterranean and Europe. In order to address an important gap in current scholarship on women and gender in the post-Roman Western kingdoms, these contributions were assembled based on a series of panels presented at the Leeds International Medieval Conference in 2022. The volume focuses particularly on a bottom-up perspective, to analyse the place, role, and experiences of women in the daily life of the period, and on how such an approach might alter our view of the social, cultural, and religious history of these kingdoms. Limited by our sources, however, we also investigate the absence of women and gender concerns in our texts, and look for alternative fonts of knowledge, such as material culture, archaeology, poetry and epigraphy.

The collection enriches our knowledge of women and gender in early medieval Western Europe and North Africa, especially by paying close attention to the social and cultural realities of lower-class women during this period.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction
MAIJASTINA KAHLOS AND ÉRIC FOURNIER
‘Forced Mobility’ of Servants and Slave-Girls in Late Antique Christianity
JESSICA VAN’T WESTEINDE
Has geminas artes: Textiles and Poetry in the Work of Attusia Lucana Sabina
HOPE WILLIARD
Women in Vandal Africa
ERIC FOURNIER
Seeking Female Experience in the Verse of Vandal-Era Carthage
MARK TIZZONI
Some Preliminary Evidence from the Letters of Avitus of Vienne on Women and Gender in the Burgundian Hegemony
BECCA GROSE
Grace, Free Will, and ‘Unavoidable’ Sex: Women in Service in the Early Medieval West
LISA BAILEY
Images of Women Dissident Ritualists in the Post-Roman World: Comparisons and Continuities
MAIJASTINA KAHLOS
The Late Antique Widow: Liberalitas, Exemplarity and Conflict
MICHAEL HANAGHAN
Memories of Women Martyrs in Late Antique and Visigothic Iberia
MAR MARCOS
Threshold Spaces: Making Female Ascetic Communities in Visigothic-Era Baetica
JAMIE WOOD
Material Perspectives on Women’s Monasticism in Visigothic Iberia
GRACE STAFFORD
Secular Women in the Lombard Kingdom
LAURY SARTI
Conclusions
BONNIE EFFROS