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FASS in the Class: The Off-Campus Visit
High school counselors and teachers — Bring SFU and FASS to your classroom with our guest speaker opportunities!
We have a roster of highly successful FASS graduate students who are keen to share their research and career journeys with your students. Each speaker will bring a unique perspective to their presentation and will add value to the learning experience by sharing their knowledge and expertise in a humanities and social sciences subject.
Presentations are subject to change and limited to availability.
Constantinople: Imagining a Medieval Megalopolis
Ideal for: History, Explorations in Social Studies, Literary Studies, Creative Writing, Urban Studies, Career Education
From its foundation in the fourth-century A.D. until its conquest in 1453, Constantinople was not only the capital of the Medieval Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, but also one of the most culturally, economically, and politically vibrant cities in Western Eurasia. In the 21st century, however, relatively little of its urban fabric remains visible, lying beneath the urban sprawl of modern Istanbul and the accretions of centuries of urban life. In addition to those famous monuments which remain, however, numerous descriptions of the city and its spaces by both natives and visitors attest to the strong impressions, both negative and positive, that it made on visitors. Following a general introduction to the city of Constantinople and Byzantine civilization more generally, the class would be exposed to the various written accounts of the city, and ultimately be encouraged to connect these with their own experiences of Vancouver and the ways in which they might characterize and write about their city, while also striving to analyze the biases and positionalities of the medieval writers, introducing them to some of the interpretive work which is critical to the practice of the humanities.
Speaker
Ethan Schmidt is a current PhD Candidate at Simon Fraser University, pursing an interdisciplinary degree with a focus on the history and literature of Medieval Byzantium. A born and raised New Yorker, Ethan’s interest in history and the classics brought him first to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where he earned an undergraduate degree in Medieval History, then to the University of Edinburgh where he attained an MSc in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Islamic Studies. His dissertation concerns the use of a form of description called ekphrasis as a means of constructing, preserving and memorializing place in Byzantine literature of the twelfth century. Furthermore, his research interests encompass questions of identity and representation, as well as imagination and memory, in the culture of the period, as well as urbanity and urban culture in Byzantium. He is passionate about the role of the humanities in a changing world, and their accessibility to broader audiences.