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Podcast

Blinding as punishment and enforced disability, with Jake Ransohoff

A conversation with Jake Ransohoff on the practice of blinding in Byzantium. Why and how was it done? Why was it more prominent in some periods rather than in others? And how did its victims cope with this disability that the state had imposed on them for (usually) crimes of treason?

Jake Ransohoff is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University. Click here to view his Academia.edu page or follow him on Twitter @jcransohoff

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The conversation is based on Jake’s Ph.D. dissertation – Sightless Eyes, Broken Bodies: Blinding, Punishment, and the Politics of Disability in the Byzantine World – done at Harvard University.

Byzantium & Friends is hosted by Anthony Kaldellis, a Professor at the University of Chicago. You can follow him on his personal website.

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You can listen to more episodes of Byzantium & Friends through PodbeanSpotify or Apple Podcasts

Top Image: The blinding of Leo Phokas the Elder depicted in the Madrid Skylitzes

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