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Dimitris Krallis

Professor, Humanities
Director, SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies

 dkrallis@sfu.ca

 AQ 6195

 

 

Profile

Research interests

  • Byzantine Studies
  • Social, political, economic and intellectual history
  • Modern reception of Byzantium

Education

  • PhD, History, University of Michigan
  • MPhil, Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford
  • BA, Political Science, University of Athens

Biography

I was born in Athens where I lived during my childhood, teenage and college years. At the University of Athens I studied political theory and, inspired by my professors of history, decided to risk all by applying for a graduate degree in Byzantine Studies. This took me to the University of Oxford where I studied Byzantine social and political history. After an interruption of four years dedicated to military service and to teaching at the American College of Greece in Athens I moved to the US and the University of Michigan for my doctorate. Upon graduation I joined the faculty at Simon Fraser University where I work at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies.

Translations

  • with Anthony Kaldellis, Michael Attaleiates: History (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library – Harvard University Press, 2012) – a translation

Journal articles and book chapters

  • "The Politics of War: Virtue, Tyche, Persuasion and the Byzantine General," in R. Evans and S. Tougher ed. Generalship in Ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), 284-305.
  • "Time, Space, and Physical Reality: Byzantine Authors and the Materiality of the Roman Imagined Community," V. N. Vlyssidou ed., Byzantine Authors and their Times (Athens: NHRF, 2021), 179-198.
  • “The Social Views of Michael Attaleiates,” in James Howard-Johnston ed., Social Change in Town and Country in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 44-61.
  • “Liquid Memories: Oceanic Allusions and Greek Imagery in the Forum of Constantine” in S. Günther, Li Qiang, C. Sode, S. Wahlgren, and Zhang Qiang eds., Byzantium in China: Studies in Honour of Professor Xu Jialing on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday - Supplements to the Journal of Ancient Civilizations (2019), 31-47.

Older

  • “Popular Political Agency in Byzantium’s Village and Towns” Byzantina Symmeikta 28 (2018), 11-38.
  • “Historiography as Critical Contemporary Commentary”
 in A. Kaldellis and N. Siniossoglou ed., Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium (Cambridge, 2017), 599-614.
  • “Historians, Politics, and the Polis in the Eleventh and twelfth Centuries” in B. Flusin and J.-C. Cheynet eds., Autour du Premier humanisme byzantin & des Cinq études sur le XIe siècle, quarante ans après Paul lemerle [Travaux et Mémoires 21.2] (Paris: Collège de France – CNRS, 2017), 419-48.
  • “Imagining Rome in Medieval Constantinople: Memory, Politics, and the Past in the Middle Byzantine Period, ”
B. Weiler and P. Lambert eds., How the Past was Used: Historical Cultures c. 750-2000 (Oxford: The British Academy, 2017), 49-68.
  • “Urbane Warriors: Smoothing out tensions between soldiers and civilians in Attaleiates’ encomium to Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates,”
 in M. D. Lauxtermann and M. Whittow eds., Byzantium in the Eleventh Century: Being in Between (London, 2017), 154-168.
  •  “Greek Glory, Constantinian Legend: Praxagoras’ Athenian Agenda in Zosimos’ New History,” Journal of Late Antiquity 7.1 (Spring 2014): 110-130.
  • “The outsider’s gaze: Reflections on Recent Non-byzantinist Readings of Byzantine History and on their implications for our field,” Byzantina Symmeikta 23 (2013): 183-99.
  • “The ‘Critic’s’ Byzantine Ploy: Voltairian Confusion in Post-secularist narratives” Boundary 2 vol. 40, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 223-43.
  •  “Harmless satire, stinging critique: a new reading of the Timarion,” in Angelov D. and Saxby M. ed., Power and Subversion in Byzantium (Ashgate/Variorum, 2013): 221-45.
  • with Thomas Kuehn, “Notes from the Guest Editors,” in Krallis D. and Kuehn T., ed. Journal of Modern Hellenism - Hellenism and Islam: Global and Historical Perspectives (Winter 2010-2011): ix- xvi.
  • “‘Democratic’ Action in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Michael Attaleiates’ ‘Republicanism’ in Context,” Viator 40 No. 2 (Fall 2009): 35-53
  • “Sacred Emperor, Holy Patriarch: A New Reading of the Clash between Emperor Isaakios I Komnenos and Patriarch Michael Keroularios in Attaleiates’ History,” Byzantinoslavica 67 (2009): 169-90.
  • “Michael Attaleiates as a Reader of Psellos” in Barber Ch. ed., Reading Michael Psellos (Leiden, 2006): 167-91.
  • “The army that crossed two frontiers and established a third: the uses of the frontier by an eleventh-century Byzantine author” in Frontières au moyen âge - Frontiers in the Middle Ages of the F.I.D.E.M. series Textes et études du moyen âge (2006): 335-48.

Book Reviews

Older

  • GILL PAGE, Being Byzantine: Greek Identity before the Ottomans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 286-87
  • YOUVAL ROTMAN, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World. Trans. Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2009, Speculum 86.1 (2011): 266-68
  • MARCUS RAUTMAN, Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire. (The Greenwood Press “Daily Life through History” Series.) Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 2006, Speculum (April 2008): 474-75

Conference presentations

  • "Personalized Efficiency: Taxation and Dialogue in Byzantine State Finances." Presented October 29, 2023 at the 49th Byzantine Studies Conference, Vancouver, BC
  • "Reflections on European Pasts Ignored: Taxes, State Power, and the Measuring of Society in a Forgotten Europe." Presented May 24, 2023 at The Idea and Futures of Europe Workshop organized by Rutgers, SFU, and Università per Stranieri di Siena
  • "The Impersonal Logic of Governance: Friendship, Cultural Affinity, and Public Service in Byzantium." Presented March 15, 2021, at the Edinburgh University Classicising Learning in Medieval Imperial Systems: Cross-cultural Approaches to Byzantine Paideia andTang/Song Xue seminar.
  • "Army commanders as managers of demotic power in Byzantium: Debate, persuasion, and politics among the genos stratiotikon." Presented June 18, 2020, at Political Animals: explorations of the political across the ages symposium organized at SFU by D. Krallis (SFU), C. Repapis (Goldsmiths University in London), and G. Politis (University of Athens)

Older

  • "Corrupting the Law with the Gifts of Friendship: Effective Governance and the Challenge of Social Affinities, The Case of Psellos." Presented at the Lecture series on Byzantine social history at the Department of History of the University of Belgrade on May 4 2017
  • "The Mundane Mechanics of Politics: Byzantine Villages and Towns as loci of Political Activity." Presented at the Lecture series on Byzantine social history at the Department of History of the University of Belgrade on May 3 2017
  • "Mapping Statecraft in the Middle Byzantine Period." Presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the Medieval Association of the Pacific – Preserving and Presenting the Medieval, held March 18, 2017 at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles CA
  • "Measuring the Goods, Mobilizing the Collective: Logistics, Procurement and Roman Identity in the Middle Byzantine Period." Presented at the Collectivities, Individuals, Identity and the Polity: Imagining the Commons in Late Antiquity and Byzantium symposium held February 3 and 4, 2017 at Simon Fraser University
  • "Angry words in God’s Mirror: Psogos and Personal Attacks in Byzantium." Presented at the 2015 Medieval and Renaissance Studies Annual Lecture held November 11 2015 at the University of Missouri, Columbia MO
  • "Urban Affinities and the Running of the Pre-modern State: Impersonal Administration, Medieval Polities, and the Bias of Modernity." Presented at: Cities, Saints, and Memory in Late Antiquity held October 23-24 at the University of Michigan
  • "Managing Fortune: Virtue and Tyche in Byzantine Generalship." Presented at: The International Medieval Congress held July 6-9 2015 at The University of Leeds, Leeds UK
  • "Historians and the polity from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries." Presented at: À la suite de Paul Lemerle L’humanisme byzantin et les études sur le XIe siècle quarante ans après, held October 23-26, 2013 at the Collège de France, Paris
  • "Reading Rome in Medieval Constantinople: Culture, Politics, and the Roman Past in the Middle Byzantine Period." Presented at: Uses of the Past in Past Societies: A Global Perspective, held June 11 and 12, 2013 at The British Academy, London
  • "Texts and Contexts for (re)Reading Byzantine Politics and Identity." Presented at: The Byzantine Seminar, held Nov. 21, 2012 at University of Oxford, UK
  • "Public opinion, political discourse, and policy formation in eleventh-century Byzantium." Presented at: The International Medieval Congress, held July 9 to 12, 2012 at Leeds
  • "An eleventh-century rhetorical interface between army and civilians: Attaleiates’ Encomium to Botaneiates." Presented at: 45th Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies, held March 24 to 26, 2012 at University of Oxford, UK
  • "Some Thoughts on Republican Readings of Byzantine History." Presented at: The Symposium in Honor of Diane Owen Hughes, held March 16-17, 2012 at the University of Michigan

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