Center for Studies on Literature and the Reception of Byzantium

Tomasz Labuk, MPhil

I am a current year (2014) graduate of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Jagiellonian University (Institute of Classics) in Krakow, where, in 2010, I defended my BA thesis in Classical Philology. In October 2014, as a PhD student of Silesian University in Katowice I joined a research project under the direction of prof. P. Marciniak.

My MA thesis (Nationalist discourse and the political myth in two Memoranda written by Georgios Gemistos Plethon) was centered on the political writings of George Gemistos Plethon and it dealt with the areas of Plethon's purported "nationalism", Hellenism, paganism and his deliberate use of political myth in two speeches of his authorship. The areas of my interest in Byzantine studies span from political and social ideas of Byzantine authors, Byzantine identity, the status of laughter in Byzantium, Byzantine approaches to bodily pleasures and the inherent conflict between Orthodoxy and "Hellenism": the inner versus the outer learning.