In presenting this vision, our approach will be twofold: to reflect upon the past and to revitalize the present, to celebrate the feminine genealogy of the faith and to amplify the prophetic mission of women in our current moment. By illuminating the riches of the faith and reading the signs of the times, we hope to equip faithful Catholics and formators with a robust foundation for understanding and articulating the Church’s vision for women in our time. Register Here Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

Each year, the University's Byzantine Studies Program offers a workshop with the year's Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellow. This year's workshop is with our 2024–25 fellow, Tyler Wolford, and speakers Darlene Brooks Hedstrom (Brandeis), Marica Cassis (Calgary), and Myrto Veikou (Patras/Uppsala).How to AttendIn person (with lunch provided): please reserve your spot by March 25, 2025.Via Zoom if you cannot attend in person; register for ZoomSchedule 10:00–11:00 AMSpeaker 1: Tyler Wolford, Byzantine Postdoctoral Fellow, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, "Byzantine Landscapes of Power and Resilience"Speaker 2: Marica Cassis, Associate Professor of History and Classics & Religion, University of Calgary, "Using Medieval Anatolian Microhistories to Understand Resilience and Change" About the Talk: As increasing attention is paid to the environmental history of the medieval world, archaeologists must contend with how to understand their sites within new methodologies and theoretical approaches, including resilience theory. In doing, so, we must resist the urge to oversimplify the results to create another overarching narrative, one which would simply replace the older one based on written texts. This is a problem that can result in locations like Anatolia, which has limited excavations for the medieval period. Rather, careful examination of individual sites as microhistories illustrates the diversity of responses to environmental change that characterized the medieval period in Anatolia. By situating individual sites in regional contexts, we open new questions about populations, material culture, and trade which, in turn, provide a much more complex and comprehensive view of the past. About the Speaker: Marica Cassis is an associate professor of history at the University of Calgary. She specializes in the history and archaeology of the Medieval Near East, and directs the medieval excavations at the site of Çadır Höyük in Türkiye.11:00–11:15 AM Coffee11:15 AM–12:15 PMSpeaker 3: Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies, Brandeis University, "Aesthetics and Movement in Monastic Landscapes" About the Talk: Oscar Aldred (2021) challenges archaeologists to ask "how" people moved through landscapes by posing new questions to move us beyond the more traditional question of "why" people moved in antiquity. The archaeology of movement shifts us away from a fixation with the archaeology of a place to the archaeology of a space. Philosopher Yuriko Saito, author of Everyday Aesthetics (2007) and Aesthetics of the Familiar (2017) offers language for describing the archaeology of everyday spaces frequently devalued for their ordinariness. In this paper, I draw inspiration from Saito’s everyday aesthetics of defamiliarization and Aldred’s archaeology of movement to examine how archaeologists of monasticism may expand our writing techniques for landscape archaeology. By integrating philosophy and archaeological theory, I demonstrate the importance of studying past movements in landscape and the role of archaeologists in considering past design aesthetics as a departure from more utilitarian and functionalist readings of built environments. About the Speaker: Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Chair in Christian Studies with a joint appointment in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies. Brooks Hedstrom is an archaeologist and historian of ancient and early Byzantine Christianity of the eastern Mediterranean world (c. 300- 1000 CE) with a specialization in the archaeology and history of monasticism. She is Senior Archaeological Consultant for the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project-North, in Wadi Natrun, Egypt, and co- director of the Monastic Archaeology Field School in Scotland. Her work combines texts, material culture, and theory to examine the history of monastic makers of late antique objects and spaces.Speaker 4: Myrto Veikou, Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology, University of Patras/Uppsala University, "Mountain People in Byzantium (9th–15th centuries): Spaces, Life-styles, Cultures, and Identities" About the Talk: The paper examines the formation of mountainous life-styles and cultures in Byzantium from the 9th century onwards, drawing from investigations in the Greek mainland. It contextualizes social/spatial/cultural practices and collective identities of the Byzantine montagnards with land-use patterns and spatial formations of the Greek highlands. About the Speaker: Myrto Veikou is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology in the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras. She is also a Researcher for the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, in the research programme "Retracing Connections—Byzantine Storyworlds in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic (c.950–c.1100)." Within the Association Internationale des Études Byzantines (AIEB), she is active as Vice-Representative for Sweden, as Vice-Chair of the AIEB Commission for the Historical Topography and Spatial Analysis of Byantium, and as founding member of the Commission for Byzantine Archaeology.12:15–1:00 PM Lunch1:00–2:00 PM Speaker Roundtable and Q&AAbout the Workshop Following substantial investment in the area of Byzantine Studies at the University of Notre Dame, including the acquisition of the Milton V. Anastos Library of Byzantine Civilization and generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame has established an annual nine-month Postdoctoral Fellowship in Byzantine Studies. This fellowship is designed for junior scholars with a completed doctorate whose research deals with some aspect of the Byzantine world. The intent of this Fellowship is to enable its holder to do innovative research drawing on the rich resources held in the Milton V. Anastos Collection, the Medieval Institute, and the Hesburgh Library more broadly. This may include the completion of book manuscripts and articles, work on text editions, or the development of new trajectories of research in one of the aforementioned fields. Towards the conclusion of the fellowship period the fellow’s work will be at the center of a workshop organized within the framework of the Byzantine Studies Seminar. Senior scholars, chosen in cooperation with the Medieval Institute, will be invited for this event treating the fellow’s subject matter. The senior scholars will discuss draft versions of the fellow’s book manuscript or articles or discuss the further development of ongoing research projects. Originally published at medieval.nd.edu.