The research program Retracing Connections cordially invites scholars active in various fields of research to submit a paper for our collective volume, preliminary entitled Stories in the Story: Digressions and Minor Characters in Theodore of Edessa.

As the title implies, we are looking for papers that relate to the Life of Theodore of Edessa, a complex hagiography made up of several stories, which was authored (or redacted) in Greek in the eleventh century to be quickly disseminated in Arabic, Georgian, and Slavonic. Although the story was composed in Byzantium, its “storyworld” was set in the Muslim empire and had in its imagination crossed imperial borders already before its many translations. The multiple transfers that take place both within the story itself and through its rich afterlife, contribute to making this hagiography a fascinating object of study.

We especially invite papers that relate to the minor voices in the Life (e.g. Michael the Sabaite, the Muslim caliph or his wife, Ader or the prostitute, the Byzantine emperor) or one of its themes (e.g. heretics, Jewish-Christian-Muslim polemics, conversion, or–why not–hagiographical food preferences). 

In essence, this interdisciplinary volume aims at capturing the richness of themes and characters in the Greek version or in its many translations or the sources it draws from, and at displaying a variety in approaches and methods (e.g. storytelling, narratology, translational studies, the study of rewritings, book productions etc). We also invite papers that relate to the same characters appearing in other hagiographies. 

By inviting the larger scholarly community to contribute, we hope to bring together various academic fields and competences and together shed more light on this medieval story, which itself is a product of many crossed borders.

Deadline for abstract: 30 June 2024
Deadline for submitted paper: 31 October 2025

Word limit: between 5,000–8,000 words