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IMC 2010: Sessions

Session 505: Texts and Identities, IV: Modes of Identification, i

Tuesday 13 July 2010, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:Institut für Mittelalterforschung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Wittgenstein Prize Project, FWF (Austrian Research Fund)
Organisers:Richard Corradini, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Maximilian Diesenberger, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Gerda Heydemann, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien
Moderator/Chair:Danuta Shanzer, Department of Classics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign / Dumbarton Oaks Medieval (Latin) Library
Paper 505-aRepertories of Identification
(Language: English)
Walter Pohl, Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Universität Wien
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Political Thought
Paper 505-bGrammars: Ethnic and Political Language in Biblical Exegesis
(Language: English)
Gerda Heydemann, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Language and Literature - Latin, Political Thought
Paper 505-cStrategies: Eutropius' Romans Revisited
(Language: English)
Maya Maskarinec, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Political Thought
Abstract

These four sessions (T&I IV-VII) present the results of a five-year research project in Vienna, which was made possible by the award of the Wittgenstein prize 2004 to Walter Pohl, and dealt with the creation of early medieval ethnic identities. Whereas the Roman and Byzantine empire and the Caliphate were built on civic and imperial identities, buttressed by religion, the post-Roman kingdoms in the West were organized around an ethnic focus: Goths, Franks, Angles, Lombards, Danes, Bulgars etc. It was more or less taken for granted that things should have developed that way. The project raises the question why they did. The underlying thesis is that it was not the strong ethnic identity of the 'Germanic' peoples that imposed ethnicity as a political factor, but that the new ethnic landscape was also based on a Christian worldview. Several of the papers therefore deal with Christian sources and the visions of community expressed in them. This line of argument is complemented by other papers that explore slightly different perspectives on the topic. How was ethnicity expressed in sources that do not directly intend to propagate it? And what were the limits and ambiguities of ethnic identification? Where did it matter, and where not? The papers look at the discourses of identification represented in the texts in their respective political and social context. What was the interest of community-building behind the particular vision of past and present found in a text? Seen as a whole, the sessions thus offer a panorama of different 'modes' of identification that were intended to establish a significant order in the world and thus make it easier to control.