The Story of the Byzantine-Renaissance Cultural Exchange through Multimedia
One of my sources is a story map of the Byzantine Empire. The purpose of the story map is to engage students un the narrative of the Byzantine Empire through easier reading paired with images and maps. In practice, I would ask students to explore the story map with partners or groups. Each person in the group would have one section. Then the teams would jigsaw the story map together in order to gain a complete understanding of how the empire rose, what it accomplished, how it contributed to the Italian Renaissance, and eventually what caused its demise.
The second entry is a comparison between Byzantine and Proto-Renaissance style. I will ask students to analyze the images for similarities. Then, students will choose a style and try to create their own piece of art in that style. The art can represent anything, it just needs to be in line with the Byzantine or Proto-Renaissance artistic tradition. Afterwards, we will do a gallery walk with the intended outcome being that students realize how closely connected Byzantine and Renaissance art was.
The Crash Course History clip will be used as a means of engaging students through media. While not asking for higher order thinking on its own, we will use his premise as a basis of discussion. The focus of the discussion will be on whether or not we agree that the Roman Empire fell with the fall of Rome, or with the Fall of Constantinople. Using evidence from previous study of the Roman Empire, the video, and of classwork done on the Byzantine empire, the class will be split and forced to argue on one side or the other. The goal will be to reach a consensus.
The first photo here is of St. Peter’s Basilica, while the second is of Hagia Sophia. The juxtaposition of the two images provides two key concepts with merit. The first is that both Italy and Byzantium had great architecture that was created for religious purposes. The second is to show how Byzantium is a mixture of East and West, since Hagia Sophia is, after all, a Christian site that has been converted into an Islamic mosque. The similarities in design and grandeur of both structures should also point students to the conclusion that Byzantine achievements were on par with that of Western Europe. The method through which these sources will be explored is teacher-led discussion.
The final source is a Byzantine Empire DBQ (found on pages 36–40). To be used as a teacher-led activity, group work, or individual practice, the implementation will depend on the students’ experience with DBQs at that point. To structure this for students, Van Sledright’s four focuses of source work, ID, Attribution, Perspective, and Reliability must be included. The documents show how the Byzantine Empire was a powerful player on the world stage and contributed to the retention of classical knowledge that resurfaced in the West with the start of the Renaissance.
