Turning a Historiographical Lens on Byzantine Studies: Textual Analysis of 50 Years of Conference Abstracts

Since the first annual Byzantine Studies Conference (BSC) of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) was hosted in 1975 at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, it has traveled from coast-to-coast across the United States and Canada. Hosted at museums, colleges, and universities, this interdisciplinary event has been a meeting point and proving ground for a half-century’s worth of scholars. After the 50th BSC was held in New York City in 2024, we (a group of three researchers) reworked thousands of abstracts into a machine-readable, reusable dataset. In this paper, we present analysis and visualizations that employ the concept of "distant reading." This digital humanities approach shows how a range of text analysis methodologies (including the use of browser-based tools such as Voyant, qualitative coding in NVivo, and Natural Language Processing in Python) can answer research questions about participants, disciplines, paper topics, and even the definitions of Byzantine Studies itself. Our key findings demonstrate how the emergence of new research methodologies coincides with new technologies as digital modes of communication became more widely available. This paper reveals surprising insights into the nature of Byzantine Studies scholarship and inclusivity. Another significant outcome is that the project provides scaffolding for others to build on. We explain how to acquire this Open Access data via an archival repository and share an extensible workflow so others can develop comparative datasets. In a decade when cultural heritage advocacy is urgent, and topics like Artificial Intelligence and data preservation complicate scholarship, we argue that analyzing the historiography of our field is a significant step toward grounding and informing its future. And so, on the occasion of the 25th gathering of the quadrennial International Congress of Byzantine Studies, we present findings based on 50 years of abstracts for the ICBS’s North American "sibling" organization.