Vukašinović, Milan

EHESS, Paris / University of Belgrade

Dr. Vukašinović is a Byzantinist who holds a joint PhD in Byzantine history from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the University of Belgrade. His thesis tackles the questions of ideology and power relations in Byzantine and Serbian narratives from the first half of the 13th century, by bringing together medieval texts and critical theory. His focal points are narrativity and spatiality of human experience. He has also published on social, cultural, and gender history of the 9th and 10th centuries.
His project examines the history of Byzantine Anatolia by addressing the issues of space, its construction, and its relation to the author’s self in the 13th-century ego-narratives and ego-documents. It analyzes the narrative strategies employed by Byzantine authors when telling stories of themselves, the space they inhabited, and their social surroundings, by looking at the autobiographical writings of four men (Nikephoros Blemmydes, Michael VIII Palaiologos, Arsenios Autoreianos, and Gregory of Cyprus), strongly rooted in Byzantine Anatolia and a collection of documents from Lembos Monastery. It challenges the modern preconceptions of a space that can be mapped and questions the emphasis put on ethnic or national identity in modern research.