Vessela Valiavitcharska

Associate Professor Vessela Valiavitcharska holds dual appointments in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park, and serves as Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Classics, as well as a Member of the Maryland Language Science Center. Her research focuses on Byzantine and Slavic rhetorical traditions, emphasizing the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the intersection of rhetoric with medieval Mediterranean and Slavic literary practices.

Her major works include Rhetoric and Rhythm in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2013), which redefines Byzantine prose rhythm’s role in persuasion, and a forthcoming translation/commentary of Joseph Rhakendytes’ Synopsis of Rhetoric. She co-edited The Practice of Rhetoric (2022), exploring rhetoric as both theory and practice. Current projects investigate ninth-century Byzantine rhetorical philosophy and the transmission of ancient knowledge during the Palaiologan Renaissance.

Research interests include: Byzantine rhetorical pedagogy, prose rhythm, the Hermogenic corpus, emotional rhetoric, and the cross-cultural transmission of classical ideas. She teaches courses on the history of rhetoric and medieval literature, emphasizing performative and argumentative aspects of discourse.