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: TBA

Leonora Neville

Biography

I specialize in the history of the east Roman empire in the ninth through twelfth centuries. I have strong interests in reuniting east Roman history with classical Roman history and its ancient Greek antecedents. My research has focused on gender, civic religion and religious aspects of political culture, and historical memory and historiography.

When east Roman history is considered as one phase in the history of the long Roman empire, we can see Christianity as one aspect of social and religious history, rather than as a definitional of “Byzantium.” This opens space for the history of Jews and non-Orthodox people to be included fully as part of east Roman history and allows for greater appreciation of change in medieval Orthodoxy. A long Roman empire, that crosses over the notional boundary between ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ with much of its culture and social norms intact, displays an alternative to the western European narrative of Renaissance recovery of a moribund classical antiquity, and hence that classical studies is not inherently western-centric. By acknowledging that the same group of people could be truly Greeks in one century and truly Romans in another, east Roman history is fundamentally anti-racist and pushes against nationalist readings of medieval history. East Roman history is remarkably disruptive and incredibly fun. You can find more on my argument for a long Roman empire in my recent book Sailing Away from Byzantium.

I am honored to serve on the Historical Advisory Council of the Ukrainian History Global Initiative: https://uhgi.org/. I am currently a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, and an editor of several book series: Cambridge Elements in Rethinking Byzantium, Palgrave’s “New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture,” and Arc Medieval Press’s “Long Roman Empire.”

Education

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

Books

Videos & Podcasts

Selected Publications

  • “Contextualizing Gender in Byzantine Society and Politics.” In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium, edited by Mati Mayer and Charis Messis, 2024, 79-95.
  • “Reading Greco-Roman Gender Ideals in Byzantium: Classical Heroes and Eastern Roman Gender.” In Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, edited by David Parnell, Michael Stewart, and Conor Whately. London: Routledge, 2022, 377-394.
  • “Privacy, friendship, and social regulation in Byzantine neighborhoods.” In The Byzantine Neighborhood: Urban Space and Political Action, edited by Fotini Kondyli and Benjamin Anderson. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman studies. London: Routledge, 2022, 245-258.
  • “Enemies of Empire in the Muses, Nikephoros Bryennios’ Material for History, and Anna Komnene’s Alexiad.” In Auteurs byzantins et leur époque. Expression, idéologie, société, edited by Alicia Simpson and Vasiliki Vlyssidou. Athens: l’Institut de Recherches Historiques, 2021, 253-265.
  • “Singing with David and Contemplating Agesilaus: Ethical Training in Byzantium.” In The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, edited by Sophia Xenophontos and Anna Marmodoro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 140-160.
  • “Anna Komnene, a monastic intellectual?” In Women and Monasticism in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean: Decoding a Cultural Map, edited by Eleanora Koutoura Galake and Ekaterini Mitsiou, Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2019, 89-106.
  • “Pity and Lamentation in the Authorial Personae of Ioannis Kaminiates and Anna Komnene.” In Gender and Emotions in Byzantium, edited by Stavroula Constantinou and Mati Meyer. London: Palgrave, 2018, 65-92.
  • “Legal Performance in Provincial Society: the Ceremonial Sounds of Sales” In Center, Province and Periphery in the Age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos: From De Cerimoniis to De Administrando Imperio. Edited by Neils Gaul, Volker Menze, and Csanád Bálint. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018, 124-136.

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