Dumbarton Oaks

Byzantine Studies Symposium exploring the multifaceted role of daemons in Byzantine thought, culture, art, and society.

This colloquium addresses a new series of questions on time, moving beyond older categories and asking how time is experienced, described, depicted, enforced, reckoned, and resisted in the Byzantine world.

The happy coincidence of this symposium with the upcoming Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium, “Sound and Scent in the Garden,” and a forthcoming exhibition at the Walters Art Museum on the five senses enables cross-cultural comparisons that include gardens in Islamic Spain, Hebrew hymnography, Syriac wine-poetry, Mediterranean ordure, and Romanesque and Gothic precious objects that were not just looked at but also touched, smelled, and heard.