Hagia Sophia is back in the news. To understand what is happening, we need to know the complex history of this building as a church, mosque, and museum, and the many parties that have sought to claim it. In this episode, Bob Ousterhout (University of Pennsylvania) illuminates this rich history, with a focus on the last century and a half, the current political forces, and the priority to preserve the history of the monument for all who wish to study and experience it. He is the author of the magisterial survey Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands (Oxford 2019), and an article on the topic at hand: 'From Hagia Sophia to Ayasofya: Architecture and the Persistence of Memory,' İstanbul Araştırmaları Yıllığı 2 (2013) 1-8, which is available here. [Sidenote: you may want to check out my recent podcast interviews on The Medieval Podcast and the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Podcast.]
17. The peoples of the Caucasus between Rome, Iran, and the steppe, with Garth Fowden
16. The Parthenon mosque, with Elizabeth Key Fowden
15. When does Roman history end and Byzantine begin?, with Marion Kruse
14. Byzantine Orthodoxy and homosexuality, with Stephen Morris
13. The case for Shenute the Great and the Coptic tradition, with Sofia Torallas Tovar and David Brakke
12. Byzantine Studies in Turkey 2.0, with Siren Çelik
11. Byzantine erotic epigrams, with Steven Smith
10. A Byzantine man of affairs, with Dimitris Krallis
9. From India to Byzantium, with Paroma Chatterjee
8. Hagia Sophia rediscovered, with Bissera Pentcheva
7. The kingdom of Rus' and "medieval Europe," with Christian Raffensperger
6. Armenian art, with Christina Maranci
5. Western fantasies about Byzantium, with Elena Boeck
4. The New Environmental History, with Tina Sessa
3. The Colonial Fourth Crusade, with George Demacopoulos
2. Imagining the Moment of Death, with Ellen Muehlberger
1. Byzantine Gender, with Leonora Neville
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