MI Graduate Workshop with Prof. Zachary Chitwood (The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

Our 2025 Mathews Byzantine lecturer, Prof. Zachary Chitwood of The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, will offer a workshop for Notre Dame graduate students following his talk from the evening before: "The Invention of Prayer for the Dead in the Byzantine Tradition." Lunch will be provided.

The invitation, with RSVP link, and any seminar readings will go out to medievalist graduate students by email. Please RSVP by noon on Friday, October 24, to reserve your spot and select your lunch.

About the Seminar

Creating a Digital Prosopogography of Mount Athos with OpenAtlas

In this workshop, both network analysis and prosopography will be demonstrated on the basis of the MAMEMS (“Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society: Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic (ca. 850-1550)”) project, whose objectives include the construction of a prosopographical database containing all Mount Athos-related persons over the course of the Middle Ages. First, the seminar will treat problems of prosopography more generally and Byzantine prosopography in particular. Following this introduction, the specific challenges of creating an Athonite prosopography with source material that is unique both in its linguistic diversity (with substantial Greek, Slavonic, Georgian and Ottoman material) and type (the largest surviving collection of commemorative lists in the premodern Orthodox world). Finally, a live demonstration of the software OpenAtlas will be given, which participants will be able to use for their own projects.