BSANA Committees & Officers

United States National Committee for Byzantine Studies (USNCBS)

The United States National Committee for Byzantine Studies (USNCBS) is the United States affiliate of the Association Internationale des Etudes Byzantines  (AIEB).  As such, the chief functions of the U.S. National Committee are to encourage Byzantine studies in the United States and to represent the interests of scholars from the United States in the planning of the International Byzantine Congresses that occur every five years under the auspices of the AIEB.

The Committee encourages the growth and prominence of Byzantine studies in the United States in various ways, most notably by lobbying academic institutions to hire scholars in the Byzantine field and by offering small subventions to graduate students and independent scholars from the United States in order to allow them to travel to International Byzantine Congresses when they are on the program. 

In addition, the Committee represents the United States in the meetings of representatives of the various national committees that choose a theme for each International Byzantine Congress and suggest various topics for round tables and colloquia, as well as potential speakers and colloquia chairs.

The Committee was organized and incorporated in 1986 to host and administer the Seventeenth International Congress of Byzantine Studies meeting in Washington, D.C.  Originally a closed membership organization where members were voted in by the Executive Committee on the basis of academic position and/or published scholarship, the nature of the membership roll was changed in 2006.  At the business  meeting of the Byzantine Studies Conference that year, the executive committee of the U.S. National Committee agreed to merge the USNCBS with the Byzantine Studies Association of North America and become a standing committee of BSANA.  Henceforth, the constituency of the USNCBS was deemed to be the whole  community of Byzantine scholars in the United States included in the BSANA mailing list and in good standing in BSANA.

At the business meeting of BSANA during the Byzantine Studies Conference in Toronto, Ontario, in October of 2007, the participants from the United States chose three officers to direct the USNCBS:  Prof. Walter Kaegi (University of Chicago) became President; Prof. Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University) became Vice-President; and Prof. George Majeska (University of Maryland, emeritus) became Secretary Treasurer.  They, along with Prof. Elizabeth Fisher (George Washington University), as an ex-officio member from the previous Committee, constitute the executive committee of the USNCBS.  They will serve a five-year term to include the next International Congress of Byzantine Studies scheduled to meet in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2011.

USNCBS Officers 2007–2011

• President: Walter Kaegi (University of Chicago)
• Vice President: Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University)
• Secretary–Treasurer: George Majeska (University of Maryland, emeritus)
• Ex officio: Elizabeth Fisher (George Washington University)