The following chapter examines the reception of Byzantium through the lenses of the Church and Orthodoxy. The conventional term ‘Byzantium’ — though currently disputed — remains the most widely used name for the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantine reception surpasses mere texts; it encompasses Byzantine literature, art, culture and the liturgical tradition. This brief survey opens with a general discussion on Byzantine reception up to the modern era, offering several examples that illustrate how Orthodoxy and the Church, broadly defined, were (re)appropriated in the period following the Fall of Constantinople. It then delves into aspects of Byzantium’s reception intricately tied to the concept of the Church, encompassing both architectural structures and artifacts, as well as religious identities and traditions.

The main topic of this chapter is the series of ecumenical councils extending from Constantine the Great until the age of Photius. These councils were imperial councils, convened by the emperor, their decrees issued as imperial laws. From the Council of Chalcedon onwards, both the agenda and the decisions taken by each council were dictated by the emperor of the time, who was particularly concerned to secure decrees that would reunite the church after a period of division. Conciliar definitions of doctrine may have served the development of doctrine, but this was not their aim, which was to reaffirm and protect the doctrines of the church fathers from contamination by novel heresy. Also to be examined is the category of council called σύνοδος ἐνδημοῦσα/synodos endemousa, usually translated as ‘home synod’, which were councils whose distinctive feature was their summoning when needed by the patriarch of Constantinople on his own authority; these councils came to replace ecumenical ones. Finally, to illustrate the contrasting situation in Late Byzantium, the pro-Palamite synods of 1341, 1347, 1351 and 1357 will be discussed; these were primarily patriarchal synods, though with imperial involvement.

This chapter presents twenty translanguaging activities to exemplify some of the many ways that we can use translanguaging in our classrooms. We have included activities across the educational spectrum, from primary to secondary, tertiary and adult stages, and at low, medium and high levels of English language proficiency. Activities are loosely categorised in four groups: thinking activities (including translanguaging think-pair-share, shared language buddies, translingual task planning and home language spaces), visual and spatial activities (including bilingual posters, linguistic landscapes, translanguaging picture description and conversations around us), people activities (including languages we know, our stories, multilingual peer mediation and reading to family and caregivers) and texts activities (including translingual jigsaws, translingual shared reading, translingual text summary, group story reading, translingual PQRST, translingual text annotation, song subtitling and translingual story writing). Each activity is justified, introduced and the procedure is explained with notes regarding adaptation, alternatives and materials and resources required (if any).

Metavaluations, introduced to relevant logics by Meyer (1976b), combine aspects of valuational semantics with provability in a logic, as we will see. One can, sometimes, define a standard, or canonical, metavaluation, and then one shows Metasoundness, that every theorem of the logic gets value 1 relative to the standard metavaluation, and Metacompleteness, that every formula that gets value 1 in the standard metavaluation is a theorem of the logic. Metacompleteness has important consequences, as we will see in Section 9.3.

This chapter examines a remarkable effort to memorialize ‘Alamgir in the decades after his death. This enterprise is noteworthy because it was unprecedented in Mughal history: no other emperor, not even ‘Alamgir’s much-admired great-grandfather Akbar (r. 1556–1605), was eulogized with the same intensity and for so many decades after his death. In its early stages this project was led by a small group of noble ‘Alamgir loyalists. In time, however, the effort extended to other parts of the rapidly disintegrating empire as well as, unexpectedly, to groups that had either been only nominally under Mughal rule or had actively opposed it. The end product was a trove of histories, administrative manuals, collections of orders and correspondence, and miniatures depicting ‘Alamgir. Although the participants’ motivations for eulogizing ‘Alamgir varied, the results point to a broad consensus about his greatness, among both Muslims and Hindus, across much of northern and central India that lasted until the late eighteenth century and the onset of British colonial rule.

Chapter 23 presents Grande sertão: veredas as the peak of a regionalist tradition that begins with José de Alencar. Yet Rosa’s story goes beyond this local tradition by blending a wide range of influences: from the Old Testament to medieval knightly romances, from ancient philosophy to hermetic and alchemical ideas, and from epic poetry to the Faustian myth. This combination creates a “universal” regionalism. The chapter also offers a detailed comparison between Grande sertão: veredas and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, highlighting shared concerns. Both novels include a strong interpretive element where understanding plays a vital role. In Rosa’s work, the protagonist Riobaldo faces a series of difficult choices, the most significant of which led to the loss of Diadorim. Struggling with this, Riobaldo chooses to tell his story to a compassionate listener, making one last effort to confront his guilt and find answers to the questions that have long troubled him.

The relationship between the Byzantine emperors and their bishops has been the subject of much debate. On the one hand, emperors could exert utmost control over the ecclesiastical hierarchy through episcopal appointments and depositions. However, the Constantinian integration of church and state presented a significant handbrake to such imperial pretensions with the ever-present prospect of civil unrest and accusations of heresy working to moderate episcopal interference.

Chapter 4 focuses principally on inequity in the Social Security Act’s means-tested Supplemental Security Income program, providing cash benefits for low-income adults and children with disabilities and low-income elderly persons. It explores the 1972 statutory exclusion from the Supplemental Security Income program of residents from the principal US territories (i.e., Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa), which are overwhelmingly Latino/a, Brown, Black, mixed-race, and/or Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander. This chapter includes a critical evaluation of the application of equal protection doctrine in the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in U.S. v. Vaello Madero. This chapter also examines the lingering shadow of the overtly racist yet not overruled Insular Cases decided in the early twentieth century hovering over this controversy – a series of cases launching and reinforcing a separate and unequal regime of rights and benefits for territory residents through the construct of indefinite “unincorporated” territory status based on assumptions even conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch has characterized as grounded in “ugly racial stereotypes,” “bigotry,” and the “theories of social Darwinists.” It concludes, arguing for Congressional reversal of the Supplemental Security Income territorial exclusion and chronicles a recent, albeit narrowly unsuccessful, legislative attempt after Vaelllo-Madero to do so.