Visible and Invisible Borders Between Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern World, Central European University, January 10–11, 2020

It has traditionally been argued that with the rise of the modern nation state, borders increasingly became lines demarcating the spatial limits of state power. Recent efforts have been made to re-examine this territorial argument and pay close attention to the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious networks that created, reinforced, and also traversed borderlands.

This conference aims to bring together an international group of scholars studying visible and invisible borders between Christians and Muslims in the early modern world in order to put distinct historiographical traditions into conversation with each other. It seeks to probe the overlaps, opportunities, and limitations of a comparative approach to borders and use the juxtaposition of thematically and temporally overlapping but spatially divergent case studies to raise questions of methodology, definitions, and future directions for research.