Upcoming Lecture by Florin Curta

Sent by Celia Chazelle to the EMF list:

Princeton University  -  Program in Hellenic Studies - Lecture

Over Fifty Years Later: The Setton-Charanis Controversy
and the "Slavic Problem" in Greece

Florin Curta

University of Florida;
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Despite an increasing number of archaeological finds pertaining to the
seventh and early eighth century in Greece, as well as in other
regions of the Balkans, the now over fifty-year old Setton-Charanis
controversy has brought historians into a cul-de-sac. To overcome the
impasse, this paper offers a plausible synthesis on the basis of
rather heterogeneous materials. I will first examine issues of
chronology raised by the now fairly abundant archaeological evidence.
Administrative and political changes will also be discussed in the
second part in relation to the evidence of coins and seals. The third
part of this paper presents the evidence of written sources. Issues of
chronology and naming are the theme of that section. The forms of
military and political organization in "Dark-Age" Greece are the focus
of the last section, as various strands of evidence will be brought
into a final conclusion.
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Florin Curta is an associate professor of medieval history and
archaeology at the University of Florida, and currently a member of
the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, NJ. He received his Ph.D. in history from Western Michigan
University (1998) and has published several studies on the
archaeology, numismatics, and early medieval history of Southeastern
and Eastern Europe. His book, Making the Slavs: History and
Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, ca. 500-700 (Cambridge, 2001)
won the Herbert Baxter Adams Award of the American Historical
Association in 2003. Curta is also the author of Southeastern Europe
in the Middle Ages, 500-1250 (Cambridge, 2006), and the editor of two
collections of studies: Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers
in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2005); and East
Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, 2005).
The latter has been named a 2006 Choice Outstanding Academic Title in
History, Geography, and Area Studies. Curta is currently working on a
manuscript entitled Greece in the Early Middle Ages (ca. 500-ca.
1050). An Economic and Social Perspective, and on a collection of
studies entitled The Other Europe: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and
Others, to be published by Brill.
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
4:30 p.m.
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103