1.08 FC – Trauma in Byzantium and Beyond

The notion of “trauma” is one of the pillars of modern psychology and psychiatry. The session is an attempt to apply the notion of “trauma” to some topics in Byzantine/Eastern Roman studies. In the frame of this session trauma is “an emotional response to a terrible event” (definition of American Psychological Association). Even though this wide definition does not always work in the medieval context, the very influence of the psychological phenomena on medieval texts and events is a legitimate object of study. The session of four papers focuses on the perceptions of historical events that produce collective traumas, namely the battle of Manzikert (1071), an epidemic of the fourteenth century, the migration of a saint with the venerating community, and fear of hunger in the Soviet era. Using methodologies from their respective periods of (post)Byzantine history, the participants of the session will investigate the application of the notion to their topics. Each paper focuses on the interaction between collective and individual traumas present in the written source. The participants will demonstrate how individual and collective actors of different societies not only lived through traumas but used collective traumas and their consequences to reach their individual and collective aims in the (post)Byzantine world.