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Podcast

Representing the trauma of captivity, enslavement, and degradation, with Adam Goldwyn

A conversation with Adam Goldwyn about first-person narratives whose protagonists experience foreign conquest, captivity, enslavement, degradation, humiliation, and loss of rights. It is based on his recent book Witness Literature in Byzantium: Narrating Slaves, Prisoners, and Refugees, which uses comparisons to the literature of the Holocaust and the Atlantic slave trade to illuminate the insights of Byzantine texts that represent similar personal experiences. Can Byzantine literature speak powerfully to these transhistorical traumas? How can we activate it to do so?

Adam Goldwyn is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at North Dakota State University, where he specializes in medieval literature and Greek literature. You can learn more about his research on Adam’s Academia.edu page or follow him on Twitter @AdamGoldwyn

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Witness Literature in Byzantium: Narrating Slaves, Prisoners, and Refugees is published by Palgrave MacMillan. You can buy it through Amazon.com

Byzantium & Friends is hosted by Anthony Kaldellis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University. You can follow him on his personal website.

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You can listen to more episodes of Byzantium & Friends through Podbean, Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Top Image: Illustration of the sack of Thessalonica by the Arab fleet in 904, from the Madrid Skylitzes, fol. 111v

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