Projects
One of the main objectives of this project is to reconstruct - so far as it is possible - the medieval cultural identity of the town of Sofia.
Undoubtedly, medieval Sardica/ Serdica/ Sredets/ Triaditsa/ Sofia was neither a real factor nor an imaginary topos the rank of Constantinople. However, for part of the Balkan population the town functioned in much the same way, especially at the level of Christian eschatology and political teleology. That is why the reconstruction of its cultural memory could create sound grounds for reconstructions of the memory of other Balkan towns whose history and/or identity were connected with those of Serdika/ Sredets/ Sofia. Last but not least, such a study would make it possible to comprehend more correctly the mechanisms of functioning of the Byzantine memory, because the way in which the "golden age" (if the archaeologists are to be trusted) of Sofia - the period between 4th and 6th centuries AD - was conceived and memorized was totally dependant on the short-term purposes and long-term projects of the ideologists of Constantinople - the New Rome.
The second objective, which is closely connected with the first one, is to draw attention to one, until now underestimated, aspect of the mentioned processes, namely, what were the side effects on the neighboring urban settlements of the formation of the identity of a multicultural and multiethnic super-town the type Constantinople was from the middle of the 4th century AD to the end of the Medieval times, and even much later, no matter its real political and economical resources.
Special emphasis will be laid on the dynamics of the changes in the memory of/about Medieval Bulgaria in the period following the Liberation (1878), during the totalitarian regime (1944-1989) and after the fall of the totalitarian regime (1989), which coincided respectively with the incoming of the age of national states followed by the formation of international identity and the period of globalization. The focus will be on the processes - different in nature, however, having as a result the same shockingly all-embracing amnesia - of the formation of the memory of the "Byzantine past" of the town, which actually encompasses its whole medieval history.