Ambiguous Borders, sessions at 27th International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 6–9, 2020
Borders are shapeshifting and often even imaginary. Their character varies in different cultures, times and spaces and within or between different academic disciplines, and within the tools we use to study the Middle Ages. Geographic borders which today appear insuperable may in the past have been zones of contact, and the medieval experience of borders was certainly different to the modern one. Nevertheless, both medieval and modern borders can be areas of contact as often as they can be void. They foster on the one hand creative exchange and on the other alienation. They are simultaneously areas of creative disjunction and of fear, and it is such tensions that make borders fascinating. These three sessions will explore the ambiguities of borders from three different perspectives: the cultural and geographic borders that came to define the medieval world in the present day, the im/material borders that are now so much a part of the way we study medieval culture, and the disciplinary and chronological borders that are now being transgressed in order to shed new light on the Middle Ages and its importance for the modern world.
Session 1: Cultural Borders
This session will explore how geographic and political borders change in their character and function. Many modern European boundaries were shaped by medieval migrations. The idea that sea borders defined an ‘island nation’ is fundamental to English nationalism, yet before it succumbed to rising sea levels, Doggerland was a major zone of human contact – as was the English Channel at various points throughout the Middle Ages. Given this history, what do the various attempts over the millennia to define boundaries with walls or other physical barriers signify? How does the experience of crossing borders change in different cultures, times and places? In the complex jurisdictional jigsaw of medieval Europe, the role of borders could be different to our modern understanding, as they assumed a larger role in everyday life but functioned in different ways. How does the experience of a medieval refugee or exile compare to that of a contemporary refugee? And How are those experiences represented then and now?
Session 2: Im/material Borders
With the increase in the availability of digital manuscripts and artefacts over the past twenty years, the ways in which we encounter the medieval has changed and will continue to change. The borders delineating repositories such as libraries and museums are becoming more fluid. The proliferation of digital archives online, via social media, within emerging digital editions, and 3D and Virtual Reality are dissolving old boundaries of custody and access. This session investigates the changing borders of our digital and virtual encounters with the medieval culture, from the analogue to the immersive. How are our material experiences with what we have traditionally called “material” culture changing across image-based media (or are they?) and is the im/material encounter becoming increasingly more blurred between physical and digital?
Session 3: Disciplinary Disjunctions
Medieval studies are too often kept penned in a border position which defines them as an entrance lobby to the Renaissance and modernity. Yet the Middle Ages disrupt and dislocate neat temporal and disciplinary geographies. They encourage us to undermine bland western canonicities. By engaging in radical disjunctions with contemporary art, literature, and cultural practices, the Middle Ages can become a means of questioning and undermining Western cultural hierarchies and creating new cultural syntheses.
Session organizers
Catherine E. Karkov, University of Leeds
Johanna Green, University of Glasgow