Junior Fellow, Byzantine Studies
Peter’s research explores how the Byzantine world constructed, conceived of, and encountered its own forms of time through its various annual cycles including the administrative, liturgical, and astronomical years. Building on the foundational work of liturgical and literary scholars who have considered how texts and rituals could shape understandings of time within the Byzantine imagination, this project turns to the role of imagery during the eleventh and fourteenth centuries when images began to directly participate in shaping the year with illustrated calendars. In addition to illustrated editions of menologia and related manuscripts, it also considers other associated visual traditions explicitly calibrated to the calendar, including architectural decoration and new iconic formats such as vita, bilateral, and calendar icons. By bringing together such diverse material, this project contends that imagery was a vital part of engaging with the year, not only in expressing annual cycles but also in generating new understandings of time.
Peter Boudreau is a PhD candidate in art history at McGill University. Prior to McGill, he completed a bachelor’s degree in art history at Emory University and a master’s degree in art history from Tufts University. His research has been supported by ANAMED, the Leventis Foundation, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec. Broader interests include medieval globalism(s), the Byzantine landscape, and diagrammatic thought. He has published on medieval cartographic experimentations, Byzantine studies in the “global turn,” and the stakes of cultural preservation.