IMC 2011: Sessions

Certain aspects of the medieval period can constitute an obstacle or embarrassment to enlightened/liberal regimes of display in art, heritage, and history museums. On the one hand, cultural inclusivity is not easy to achieve when most of the surviving objects on display seem to be Christian and 'white' or European. On the other hand, material traces of cultural encounters are often reminders of past forms of violence that can hardly be appropriated as 'usable past'. Taking as a point of departure the display of the Synagoga panel in York and other images and objects that reference non-Christian or violent events and narratives, this round table discussion will address the tensions created in the encounter between past realities and present interpretations, and the ways in which present practices of display, curation, preservation, and interpretation often reproduce discourses of colonisation.

Participants include Eva Frojmovic (University of Leeds), Ananya Kabir (University of Leeds), Catherine E. Karkov (University of Leeds), Marcia Kupfer (Independent Scholar, Washington DC), Janet T. Marquardt (Eastern Illinois University, Charleston), Tom Nickson (University of York), Martin Przybilski (Fachbereich Germanistik, Universität Trier), Miri Rubin (University of London), D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Annette Weber (Hochschule für Jüdische Studies, Heidelberg), and Diane Wolfthal (Rice University).