Neville, Leonora 1970- (Leonora Alice Neville)

PERSONAL:

Born November 12, 1970; married Stephen Rhody, April 27, 2002; children: Anselm Lewis, Evangeline Joy. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1992; Princeton University, Ph.D., 1998; also attended Boston University, Middlebury College, the Institute for Balkan Studies in Thessaloniki, Greece, and the University of Athens.

ADDRESSES:

Office—History Department, Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20064. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, assistant professor, 1998-2004, associate professor of history, 2004—. Member, Byzantine Studies Conference.

MEMBER:

World History Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Nikolaos Panagiotakis Prize, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 2004.

Contributor to journals, including Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, World History Bulletin, and the Catholic Historical Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Leonora Neville is a student of antiquities and the Byzantine Empire. She earned her undergraduate degree in history with distinction from Yale University in 1992, then went on to continue her education at Princeton University, graduating with her doctorate in 1998. In addition, she studied languages extensively, taking a number of summer and intensive courses over her academic career, including a summer course in Latin at Boston University, a summer program in Arabic from Middlebury College, and summer courses in modern Greek from both the Institute for Balkan Studies in Thessaloniki, Greece, and at the University of Athens. Neville joined the faculty of the Catholic University of America in 1998, taking a position as an assistant professor in the department of history. In 2004, she was promoted to associate professor. Her primary areas of research and academic interest include the social and cultural history of the Byzantine Empire and early medieval history of the Eastern Mediterranean region. She also teaches course on the Crusades, the rise of Islam, and general world history prior to 1600. Aside from her academic endeavors, Neville has written a number of articles and reviews for academic journals, such as Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, World History Bulletin, and the Catholic Historical Review. She is also the author of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, which was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2004.

Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100 begins by addressing the way that society was structured during this period of the Byzantine Empire. Neville looks at the family unit as the main building block of the societal web, one that built upon itself to create individual communities, which then built upon each other to create the fabric of the empire as a whole. The imperial government was the overriding authority over all of these entities, but it performed its function on different levels for each unit, with some of that authority trickling down so that other levels of leadership existed to maintain law and regulation. Neville provides an overview of the imperial government and how it functioned, both on a cultural level and administratively. At the highest level, at least in practice, Neville contends that tax collection to ensure the smooth running of the empire was the foremost concern, with the activities in the farthest reaches of the empire of little interest otherwise.

From this point, Neville works her way down to the smaller communities or provinces in order to analyze the effect of authority from the imperial level on this social structure, and also the way it governed itself and/or imposed authority on the smaller social groups under its auspices. Beyond that were the individual households themselves and their relationship to the larger picture. Households were linked to one another through a system of services and trade, providing a certain hierarchy within themselves, depending on their output. Neville goes on to address how these households might have dealt with the imperial authority when necessary, and what choices they might have had in such instances. Other chapters address the roles of other bodies, such as the Orthodox church, tax collectors who straddled levels of authority, and the overriding importance of relationships between individuals rather than actual ranking in society. Writing for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Franziska E. Shlosser commented that "Neville's book on authority in Byzantine provincial society is a welcome study since so much that has been written about Byzantine history centres on Constantinople and the Imperial government." Canadian Journal of History reviewer Walter E. Kaegi declared that "this is an essential book for Byzantinists of all ages, but especially for young ones. It is cutting edge."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April 1, 2005, Michael Angold, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, p. 535.

Canadian Journal of History, March 22, 2006, Walter E. Kaegi, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100.

English Historical Review, April 1, 2006, Rosemary Morris, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, p. 507.

Medieval Review, April 1, 2005, Michel Kaplan, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100.

Mediterranean Historical Review, June, 2006, Ze'ev Herzog, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, pp. 115-155.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, April 1, 2006, Mark Bartusis, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100, p. 570.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Classical Review Online,http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ (March 19, 2005), Franziska E. Shlosser, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100.

Catholic University of America History Department Web site,http://history.cua.edu/ (April 23, 2008), faculty profile.

Catholic University of America Public Affairs Web site,http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/ (April 23, 2008), faculty profile.

H-Net Reviews,http://www.h-net.org/ (April 23, 2008), Warren Treadgold, review of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100.