Radical Traditionalism
Radical Traditionalism: The Influence of Walter Kaegi in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval Studies brings together scholars from fields and disciplines as diverse as medieval history, Byzantine history, Roman art history, and early Islamic studies. These scholars were students of Walter Kaegi, whose work influenced them greatly. This collection offers thoughtful essays examining political culture, source criticism and institutional continuity and discontinuity in a variety of areas, as well as illustrates how one scholar's influence can reach across disciplinary boundaries to shape the argumentative structures and methods of both students and scholars. Any reader interested in the formation of disciplinary “schools” and how the broad application of a coherent approach to sources both literary and material will find this book an innovative approach to the Festschrift genre.
A fitting tribute to one of North America's most widely-respected scholars of Byzantium, this collection of chapters on a broad selection of different themes and topics illustrates not only the scholarship of the authors, all of whom studied with Walter Kaegi, but is perhaps more importantly a testament to the range, breadth of scholarship and intellectual leadership of their mentor.
John F. Haldon, Princeton University
Few scholars live to become classics in their own time, but Walter Kaegi is among them. As fashions came and went, Kaegi continued to produce solid, original, and lasting scholarship grounded in the critical use of primary sources and engagement with past historians. The work of his students included in this volume pledges the vital survival of this tradition for the lasting benefit of late Roman, early medieval, and especially Byzantine Studies.
Anthony Kaldellis, The Ohio State University