Department of History

Leonora Neville

Position title: John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair of Byzantine History; Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor

Email: leonora.neville@wisc.edu

Phone: 608.263.1814

Address:
Office: 4106 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 4013 Mosse Humanities
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Office Hours: My office hours are by appointment. Email me and we will arrange a time to meet either in my office or via Zoom.

Leonora Neville

Biography

I am an historian of the medieval eastern Mediterranean, specializing in the society and culture of the eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire) in the ninth through twelfth centuries. I have strong interests in the late antique and classical antecedents of the medieval eastern Mediterranean cultures. Within Byzantine history, my particular research interests include: gender, civic religion and religious aspects of political culture, and historical memory and historiography.

Education

Ph.D., Princeton University 1998
B.A., Yale University 1992

Books

Videos & Podcasts

Selected Publications

  • Byzantine Gender, under contract with Arc Medieval Press, Past Imperfect series.
  • “Why the Byzantines Wrote History” In Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies: Plenary Papers, Edited by Smilja Marjaović-Dušanić, Serbian National Committee of the Association Internationale des Études Byzantines, 2016, 265-276.
  • “The Adventures of a Provincial Female Founder: Glykeria and the Rhetoric of Female Weakness” In Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 60, edited by Margaret Mullett, Michael Grünbart and Lioba Theis, 2014, 153-162.
  • “Lamentation, History, and Female Authorship in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 53.1, (2013): 192–218.
  • “Organic Local Government and Village Authority.” In Authority in Byzantium, ed. Pamela Armstrong, Ashgate, 2013, 285-295.
  • “Strong Women and their Husbands in Byzantine Historiography.” In The Byzantine World, ed. Paul Stephenson, Routledge, 2010, 72-82.
  • “A history of Caesar John Doukas in Nikephoros Bryennios’s Material for History?” In Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 32.2 (2008) 168-188.
  • “Taxing Sophronia’s Son-in-Law: Representations of Women in Provincial Documents.” In Women in Byzantium: Varieties of Experience, 800-1200, ed. Lynda Garland, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, 75-87.
  • “Information, ceremony and power in Byzantine fiscal registers: varieties of function in the Cadaster of Thebes,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 25 (2001): 20-43.

Advisor To

Selected Awards

  • Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, 2016
  • Co-Winner of the Prize in Memory of Nikolaos Panagiotakis, 2007 edition, for the essay “Power-Hungry Byzantine Empresses and Theodora’s Rhetorical Legacy: the functions of women in Byzantine historical narrative” given by the Università Ca’Foscari in Venice and the Greek Ministry of Culture.
  • Dumbarton Oaks Bliss Prize Fellowship 1992-1994

History Courses