Three (3) Postdoctoral Fellowships, LabEx RESMED, France (2015-2016)

The Research Centre “Religions and Societies in the Mediterranean world” (RESMED), a laboratory of excellence affiliated to Sorbonne University (Paris) offers three (3) one-year RESMED postdoctoral fellowships, starting September 2015

Profiles
- Profile 1. A1. Conversions and controversies between Semitic and Greco-Roman worlds
The research will focus on exchanges and influences between Greco-Roman culture and the Semitic worlds, particularly in the field of religion: theology, prayer, liturgy, religious literature in general, forms and places of worship. It will highlight the confrontation of different religious thoughts (misunderstanding, contradictions) and its impact on religious traditions (construction of identities, new doctrines or beliefs). Particular attention will be given to projects devoted to the transfer from one religious culture to another (terms, issues, consequences) and to the polemics that may arise from this change.

- Profile 2.A1. The image of Islam in Byzantium through the Palaeologan period (13th-15th century)
Through the historical documents (historical works of John VI Kantakouzenos and Nikephoros Gregoras, the Patriarchal register of Constantinople, Mount Athos archives, Lives of Athonite saints, letters from captivity of Gregory Palamas, pastoral texts of Matthew of Ephesus and Theophanes of Nicea, etc.), the study will analyze how military events, contacts with Muslims (Turks, Mongols and Mamluks) and the testimony of famous characters have changed the perception of the Muslim problem – the Turkish issue in particular –, a problem that had been tackled earlier by the apologetic tradition and Byzantine controversy.
Several areas can be explored, such as: - the life of the Christian communities in the Eastern provinces of the Empire, the most exposed to the Turkish-Ottoman progress; - the management of looted Athonite monasteries, the fate of monks captured during pirate incursions, the efforts to maintain monastic tax privileges; - the production of polemical treaties against Islam and their echos within the Byzantine society.

- Profile 3. C2. Words of peace. A program in historical lexicography
This research aims to explore the lexicon of peace in various cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean during Antiquity and the Middle Ages. While its opposite, war, has been the subject of much research, peace is a difficult concept to grasp. A lexicographical study will address its representations in different civilizations and religions (including sources in Arabic, Archaic, Classical, Patristic and Byzantine Greek, Slavonic, Bulgarian, Serbian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic, Turkish or Persian). One will study texts of different genres to account for these definitions of “peace” in different cultures over the long term, and more broadly in cultural history. In addition, these lexical explorations will allow us to understand whether the ideas conveyed by the words moved from one culture to another.

Further details:
http://www.labex-resmed.fr