The Gender of Money: Byzantine Empresses on Coins (324–802)

In Byzantium, images on coins were a means to disseminate information about the state widely and quickly. Portraits of emperors were standard; empresses also sometimes appeared. Between 324 and 802, imperial women served as important ideological resources, and their portraits on coins always served as symbols of state well‐being and especially of legitimacy for the current ruling family. Changes in the coin imagery demonstrate how the mints used images of imperial women to respond to specific political situations, but also allow us to chart broader shifts in Byzantine gender strategies.     

PANEL ON NATIONALISM IN THE USSR: ENVIRONMENTAL AND TERRITORIAL ASPECTS

A panel of geographers, demographers, and political scientists discusses a broad range of issues related to the resurgence of nationalism in the USSR and its relationship to environmental protest and territorial disputes: the emergence of nationality politics; differential rates of nationality population growth and urbanization; various conceptions of (and levels of autonomy within) ethnic homelands; the spatial pattern of actual and potential territorial claims; linkages between environmentalism and nationalism (with an emphasis on the Baltic and Central Asian republics); parallels and differences between the USSR and other countries; and consequences of efforts to implement republic-level economic autonomy and khozraschet.