Scott Kennedy received his PhD in Classics from the Ohio State University in 2018 after a year long doctoral fellowship in Byzantine studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, DC. His research interests explore the intersection of classical and Byzantine rhetoric, historiography, and history. He is currently working on two book length projects. The first, deriving from his dissertation, is an exploration of the afterlife of the classical historian Thucydides between antiquity and Byzantium, tracing how rhetoricians and historians alike analyzed, rejected, and reshaped the Athenian historian’s tale of war and power politics between Athens and Sparta. The second explores the Byzantine historian Kritoboulos, a well-known imitator of Thucydides, who wrote a history of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and reign of the Turkish sultan Mehmet II the Conqueror (1451-1481). An intellectual caught between the Renaissance, Byzantium, and Turkey, this project explores how classical history and rhetoric shaped Kritoboulos’ worldview and ultimate rejection of Mehmet II’s attempts to appropriate Byzantium’s legacy.
His publications include:
Books
Two Works on Trebizond: Michael Panaretos, Bessarion (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2019)
Articles
*“The Chronicle of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond: Michael Panaretos in Context” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 112 (2019): 899-934.
* “Winter is coming: the barbarization of Roman leaders in imperial panegyrics from 446-468 A.D.” Classical Quarterly 69.1 (2019): 1-13.
* “A Classic Dethroned: the Decline and Fall of Thucydides in Middle Byzantium” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 58 (2018): 607-35.
* “Bessarion’s Date of Birth: A New Assessment of the Evidence.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 111 (2018): 641-58.
* “Callimachus in a Later Context: Michael Choniates,” Eikasmos 27 (2016), 291-312.