Alice-Mary Talbot

Those who are familiar with the world of Byzantine studies, and its most prominent institutional home in North America, viz., Dumbarton Oaks, will be amply familiar with the name and work of Alice-Mary Talbot.

Talbot is the author or editor of such works as

• Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints' Lives in English Translation 
• Faith Healing in Late Byzantium: The Posthumous Miracles of the Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople by Theoktistos the Stoudite 
• Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium 
• Women and Religious Life in Byzantium 
• Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints' Lives in English Translation 

In addition, Talbot has for years edited the prestigious series Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Now a Festschrift has been organized, and in November of this year will be published in her honor: Dennis Sullivan, Elizabeth Fisher, and Stratis Papaioannou, eds., Byzantine Religious Culture: Studies in Honor of Alice-Mary Talbot (Brill, 2011), 592pp.  About this book, the publisher says:

Alice-Mary Talbot has profoundly influenced Byzantine Studies in America and Europe, focusing her scholarship upon the social context of Byzantine religious practices. As Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and as editor of Dumbarton Oaks Papers, she touched the professional lives of senior and junior Byzantinists alike. This collection of twenty-five articles from scholars associated with her at various stages in her career compasses such varied disciplines as art history, social history, literature, epigraphy, numismatics and sigillography; contributions are grouped in three … read morerelated sections: “Women,” “Icons and Images,” and finally “Texts, Practices, Spaces.” Illustrated with both b/w and color images, the volume is at once a varied and a coherent tribute to this extraordinary scholar.

Contributors are Alexander Alexakis, Simon Bendall, Annemarie Weyl Carr, John Duffy, Stephanos Efthymiadis, Elizabeth A. Fisher, Jaroslav Folda, Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Michael Grünbart, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Angela Constantinides Hero, Michel Kaplan, Paul Magdalino, Henry Maguire, Maria Mavroudi, Stamatina McGrath, Cécile Morrisson, John Nesbitt, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Stratis Papaioannou, Manolis Patedakis, Brigitte Pitarakis, Claudia Rapp, Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, Brooke Shilling, Paul Stephenson and Denis Sullivan.

We will have this book reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies in 2012.