#prosopography

[mybuddyjimmy]

Prosopography

Prosopography [prah-sə-PAH-ɡrə-fee] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, late 16th century 1. A description of a person’s social and family connections, career, etc., or a collection of such descriptions. Examples of prosopography in a sentence  “The sociologist used the prosopographies of different groups to study larger trends.”  “My grandmother traced our family’s genealogy, and I used her…

[wavaur]

doodled a quick genealogical tree for scaevolas because people in the romechat were confused about them and it felt like showing a finger trick to a child. everyone was in awe over the simplest of trees

[catilinas]

autism.

[caesarsaladinn]

I need a name for the Basil Lekapenos stand-in in the Niketasverse, the grand chamberlain who owns half the land between Constantinople and Ancyra and flips loyalties as soon as the war breaks out

[officialpenisenvy]

every day is a reminder i need to start getting into prosopography if i want to keep going as an epigrapher

[ephemeral-winter]

apparently there was a whole parallel conference happening this weekend because my org put out a position of scholarly neutrality last fall and reaffirmed a commitment to all scholars regardless of national origin and the collective that opposed that statement decided to boycott? I’m sympathetic to the collective’s aims even if I think their demands are misguided but like. I’m very online and didn’t find out about it until I was in the airport to go home. how were the senior scholars with power in the org who couldn’t figure out getting PowerPoint into present slideshow view at the last session supposed to know or do anything about it

[martinjost]

Reise durch mein Bücherregal 📚

v.l.n.r.: Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (Hrsg.), «Prosopographia Imperii Romani» (UB -+)

#01164 · Dank diesem Werk wissen wir endlich, wie die „DDR“ auf Latein hieß, denn seine Herausgeberin ist die Academia Scientarum Rei Publicae Democraticae Germanicae.

Die Prosopographie ist eine historische Hilfswissenschaft, die einzelne Personen identifiziert und alle Spuren, die es über diese Individuen in den alten Quellen gibt, zusammenträgt. Sie befasst sich also nicht gerade mit Staatsmännern und Feldherren, über die die Zeitgenossen Bücher geschrieben haben, sondern über Nebenfiguren der Geschichte, die eventuell nur in einem Steuerbescheid auftauchen und dann wieder auf einem Grabstein. Oder in einer einzigen schriftlichen Quelle als Nebenfigur. Bei der Prosopographie handelt es sich also um die mühseligste Fleißarbeit, bei der ganz langsam biografische Daten zu Nachschlagewerken zusammengetragen werden. Das sieht man schon daran, über wie viele Jahrzehnte sich die Erscheinungsdaten der einzelnen Bände dieses Werks erstrecken.

Die bloße Existenz dieses Spezialfachs hat mich als Student der Alten Geschichte endlos fasziniert und als ich antiquarisch auf zwei günstige Bände einer Prosopographie des Römischen Reichs vom 1. bis zum 3. Jahrhundert gestoßen bin, habe ich sie in meine Büchersammlung aufgenommen. Die Nutzer*innen dieses Werks gehören einer kleinen Nische an, die ohnehin fließend Latein liest, so dass die beiden Bände 1983 bzw. 1987 in Latein verfasst sind – einschließlich Vorwort. Die Ränder der Bögen sind nicht sauber beschnitten, man muss die Seiten mit einem Brieföffner trennen, bevor sie sich aufblättern lassen. Trotz der mittelmäßigen Verarbeitung betrug der Neupreis (ausweislich der Reihen-Übersicht auf der Buchrückseite) um die 100,– D-Mark. Typische Abnehmerinnen waren wohl wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken, die die Bücher ohnehin als erstes zum Buchbinder geschickt hätten.

Wenn ihr zufällig Marcus Nummius Albinus heißt und auf der Suche nach einem Vorfahren seid, fragt mich ruhig – ich kann ihn in meinem Adressbuch nachschlagen (Pars V Fasciculus 3, No. 230).

[sextuspompey]

needing visual aid for one (1) trial is kind of wild

[sheikahwarriork]

nobody will understand this but: FUCK YOU CUSAS 30 by van soldt

[transmutationisms]

historical writing followup anon here. ackk i thought the link got pasted but it mustve gotten sucked into the void. i was referring to this ^^ https://www.tumblr.com/transmutationisms/777831995879374848/

oh my god i literally meant to circle back to that like a month ago. my drafts are where posts go to die.

yeas for anyone who cares & missed it—the question was for any historical texts that have influenced how i think about the formal practice of writing history, and/or that are simply enjoyable reads on a mechanical prose level. i'm listing in no particular order, & with more of a focus on style & general methodological orientation over the substance of the arguments. also these are probably all going to be in history of science/medicine but that's rly just because those are texts i've spent a lot of time with lol.

ill composed: sickness, gender, and belief in early modern england by olivia weisser -- primary sources here are largely personal writings: journals, business records, marginalia, she spent a LOT of time combing archives here and it allows her to really straddle the line between history of medicine and history of affect/emotions, which is not typically a topic i find treated this persuasively

doctoring traditions: ayurveda, small technologies, and braided sciences by projit bihari mukharji -- loved this on a prose level, and is also a useful demo of how histories can look once we move past the unidirectional basalla-style model of colonial knowledge dissemination & deal with eg the interests of these upper-caste colonial administrators in the creation & defence of an 'ayurvedic tradition'

medicalizing blackness: making racial difference in the atlantic world, 1780–1840 by rana hogarth -- both the periodisation and the geographic delineation are very very strongly chosen here, she brings together a number of atlantic-world episodes often treated in isolation from one another. treats each in its specificity but succeeds in pulling from the aggregate a strong analysis of the overarching concept (antiblackness; the creation of race via medical science) that she's after

baron de vastey and the origins of black atlantic humanism by marlene daut -- brought me back to seeing how close literary textual analysis can be historicised / integrated into historical analysis productively, after several years of mostly trying to curb my impulse toward the former

victorian sensation: the extraordinary publication, reception, and secret authorship of vestiges and of the natural history of creation by james secord -- classic of history of the book, history of readership / popular audiences, &c

the fall of robespierre: 24 hours in revolutionary paris by colin jones -- i found this boring & its specific topic means it's not really beating the great man allegations but it did certainly get me thinking about how we narrativise/periodise in history, and why

the physician-legislators of france: medicine and politics in the early third republic, 1870–1914 by jack ellis -- prosopography is hard to write and usually kind of boring to read but the payoff is worth it i fear

ideals of the body: architecture, urbanism, and hygiene in postrevolutionary paris by sun-young park -- working in traditions of urban history, architectural history, anthropology à la rabinow, really gorgeous granular analysis of the creation & design of the actual physical spaces comprising a city. esp shines where she treats pedagogical institutions, incl paris deaf-blind institutes

mining language: racial thinking, indigenous knowledge, & colonial metallurgy in the early modern iberian world by allison bigelow -- super super fun & fruitful moves here bringing together discourse analysis, history of the book, economic history, and history of technology in colonial mining & the creation & circulation of knowledge in those colonial networks

engineers of happy land: technology and nationalism in a colony by rudolf mrázek -- i have issues with this book but stylistically it is really a pleasure & got me thinking a lot about how we write history & how style and ideology inform one another in that process. like if the arcades project was about colonial indonesia

what nostalgia was: war, empire, and the time of a deadly emotion by thomas dodman -- more people should spend half this effort on historicising 1) affects and 2) psychiatric descriptions of those affects. history is so fun when it's fun

the expressiveness of the body and the divergence of greek and chinese medicine by shigehisa kuriyama -- this is so so fun on a prose level in a way academic history rarely is. it's a comparative history, which in general i don't love, and is markedly much more detailed in the exposition of greek medicine than chinese

[ceruleanvulpine]

the big theorypost. spoilers for both volumes of misericorde

maybe this goes without saying, maybe not: i think tatiana is A Catherine. firstly, because of the law of conservation of mystery women*. but also she describes herself as a dilettante, and is clearly a matched set with he/him eustace (2stace). they're actually labeled as eustace2 and her2 in the script. eustace and catherine, of course, were unexpectedly close and worked together in the library. which is relevant because...

tatiana and 2stace are on some reality warping storyteller shit. this is pretty clear from their conversation, i think. the most obvious example of it in action is that tatiana describes the IRA-assassination-plot thriller to alex, who then finds herself inside it. alex's narration talks about going along with jim because it "feels right", which is plausibly not mind control, except tatiana also becomes an old friend and/or boss of everyone else she meets.

are tatiana and 2stace the *same people* as catherine and eustace, or versions of them? at first i thought alex was A Flora and jim was A [The Farmer] but that doesn't seem as one-to-one. in 1983 they're both immediately off-putting, whereas in 1483 eustace is capable of acting normal-ish, but maybe it was just 500 years of existing outside the narrative??

evidence for 1483 eustace and catherine having reality-altering powers and/or being aware of the narrative: the shelves. eustace's references to things she can't explain. catherine having visions of music/poetry/social movements/things they Need To Do. the presence or absence of goats. catherine's chronicles are mentioned but not there; meanwhile eustace chronicles darcy's visions, which include Books and Fire Goat, and won't let anyone see them.

There Are Two Swords. 2stace and tatiana are philosophically opposed. eustace (1483) talks about preferring not to interfere with people, 2stace (1983) is a stickler for accuracy, mad about liberties taken with katherine's (in nunleft) and jim's (in prosopography) stories. meanwhile tatiana loves spoilers, mocks 2stace for not being able to enjoy his own fantasies, and "loathe[s] the tyranny of continuity."

so i guess my reach-iest theory is that eustace and catherine, in 1483, are both to some extent able to alter the story / the reality they are in, and approach it differently. eustace is not interfering, whereas catherine is flitting around trying to bring out the hidden potential of the nuns and (checks notes) trying to kill someone and change the course of history? i don't know enough about the war of the roses for this.

what catherine was doing "got her killed," but eustace also refers to james as a "solution to a problem i let get out of hand". eustace could have been involved (metafictionally??) without actually doing the deed.

in fact one of the swords killed catherine and the other is wielded by the demon.

so.. maybe... catherine is killed, but still present, possibly involved in the ghost sightings that *aren't* eustace (and it would be thematically appropriate for her demon to be a magic terror while eustace's is created by dressing up in armor) and the magic circles. either she or eustace is the devil james saw (who spoke with a woman's voice). eustace is trying to keep the story on track and struggling with hedwig, but hedwig isn't her real enemy. (has hedwig stepped into a role somehow by picking up catherine's job? or is she just totally mundane and lost. poor thing.)

but also this sounds crazy so WHO KNOWS.

P.S. it's so goddamn funny that tatiana asks alex about 15th century metallurgy. girl are you trying to catch your stickler friend in an inaccuracy? cinemasins ding?

*umineko has never followed the law of conservation of mystery women, ever, except in the ways that it does

[jeannereames]

Prosopography R Us! Fun with Hephaistion's allies and enemies at the court of Alexander.

[catilinas]

guys will say ohhh the family tree is so confusing idk who anyone is. and then show you a family tree that is not even that confusing. like it is just one family tree. it doesn't even have three possible iterations that are incompatible with one another. it doesnt even have onions

[caesarsaladinn]

apparently I have been doing this for the last, like, eight months without realizing it. this is your final warning that Niketas was not a real guy, before I start posting about him like he was :)

time to Gregory Berrycone my OC into history

[the-mediaeval-monk]

This website is so good if you need Old English names. PASE my beloved.

[thevarietyofhumanexperience]

reading a prosopography of nuns in medieval ireland and anyway, look... it's her.....