My first book is now out! It is published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their series New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture (NABHC). This monograph is a revision of my 2016 PhD thesis.
This book asks how the inhabitants and neighbours of the Eastern Roman Empire understand their identity as Romans in the centuries following the emergence of Islam as a world-religion. Its answers lie in exploring the nature of change and continuity of social structures, self-representation, and boundaries as markers of belonging to the Roman group in the period from circa AD 650 to 850. Early medieval Romanness was integral to the Roman imperial project; its local utility as an identifier was shaped by a given community’s relationship with Constantinople, the capital of the Roman state. This volume argues that there was fundamental continuity of Roman identity from Late Antiquity through these centuries into later periods. Many transformations which are ascribed to the Romans of this era have been subjectively assigned by outsiders, separated by time or space, and are not born out by the sources. This finding dovetails with other recent historical works re-evaluating the early medieval Eastern Roman polity and its ideology.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60906-1
Special thanks to the Centre for Advanced Studies “Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages” at the University of Tübingen who hosted me for a Research Fellowship in early 2020 to which supported revising and expanding the text. Thanks also to the Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR) at the Catholic University of America who gave me an academic home in Washington DC where I edited the proofs.
January 22nd , 2021 by DC Whalin