Introduction Jane Chick and Michael Paraskos
OTHELLO’S ISLAND IS a conference focusing on the medieval and early modern periods, held annually on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It was started in 2013 by Professor James Fitzmaurice of the University of Sheffield and Northern Arizona University, Ben Read of the University of Leeds and Dr Michael Paraskos of Imperial College London, and as is so often the case with events like this, it was the product of our personal friendship as much as a recognition that there is a wealth of history and culture relating to Cyprus and the mediaeval and early modern periods that often goes overlooked. This frequent neglect includes not only the extraordinary wealth of Byzantine art on the island, such as the painted churches of the Troodhos mountains, but also the non-Byzantine medieval and early modern artefacts, including the dramatic gothic cathedrals of Nicosia and Famagusta and the Ottoman hans (inns) of Nicosia and Paphos. Then there is the impact of Cyprus on western culture through the island’s surprisingly frequent appearances in the works of writers ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to Cervantes, and William Shakespeare to Mary Wroth. It all suggested, to us at least as we sat enjoying a beer and an ouzini cocktail in a Larnaca bar, that there was room for an annual multi-disciplinary conference for people with open minds and broad-ranging interests. For the first two years of its existence Othello’s Island was hosted by the Cornaro Institute in the city of Larnaca, but in 2015 the conference moved to the Centre for Visual Arts and Research (CVAR) in Nicosia, which has been its home ever since. With that move we developed the conference to include new people on the organisational side, and new strands into the conference itself. This included a number
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