Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché: A Conversation with Maria Mavroudi

Description

This book is based on an in-depth conversation between Howard Burton and Maria Mavroudi, Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Maria Mavroudi specializes in the study of the Byzantine Empire and this wide-ranging conversation explores her extensive research on the Byzantine Empire and how it has repeatedly been undervalued by historians despite its having been a military and cultural powerhouse for more than a millennium. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Beyond the High-School Narrative, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: Becoming A Byzantinist - Inspiration and motivation Historical Background - Byzantine beginnings The High-School Narrative - History as a cultural mirror Recovering Truth - A never-ending goal Building Knowledge - Standing on the shoulders of giants Annotated Discoveries - Leo the Mathematician, for example A Translational Discovery - From Arabic to Greek, surprisingly Arrows of Causality - Consequential greatness Decline - A matter of opinion? Extracting Meaning - Interpreting human experiences Ever-Moving Targets - Arab-Greek bilingualism and its implications About Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series (100 books): Presented in an accessible, conversational format, Ideas Roadshow books not only explore frontline academic research featuring world-leading researchers, including 3 Nobel Laureates, but also reveal the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. Howard Burton holds a PhD in physics and an MA in philosophy, and was the Founding Director of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.