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SEQUENCE:0
DTSTAMP:20130619T050721Z
DTSTART:20120306T173000Z
DTEND:20120306T183000Z
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:OPAQUE
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1, Dept of History
SUMMARY:“Strange Beauty”: Comeliness, Physicality and the Body
  in Byzantium
DESCRIPTION:Both fascinating and elusive, Byzantine bodies appear in recen
 t years to be taking center stage in the study of Byzantium, with notions 
 such as gender, sensuality and desire coming increasingly under the scruti
 ny of scholarship.This seminar focuses on an aspect of the body in Byzanti
 um that remains 'strange', unfamiliar: the notion of physical beauty. The 
 evidence provided by the renowned Michael Psellos -author, philosopher, co
 urtier and egocentric- in the beautifully penned physical descriptions of 
 his own family is set against the broader context of eleventh and twelfth 
 century Byzantium, and builds a telling image of byzantine beliefs, attitu
 des, stereotypes and preconceptions surrounding physical beauty. Through t
 he juxtaposition of imagery and writing the 'beautiful body' claims lost g
 round and invites us to reconsider the balance between physicality and spi
 rituality in Byzantium.  Myrto Hatzaki was born in Athens in 1977. Sh
 e studied History of Art at Warwick University and at the Courtauld Instit
 ute of Art in London where she obtained her MA and then her PhD in 2004. S
 he is currently working as a curator at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum
  and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. Her fist book, Beauty and the Male Body
  in Byzantium was published in 2009 by Palgrave Macmillan.
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