IMC 2014: Sessions

'Investing in the Past: Medieval Europe in the Globalized 21st Century (IPMEG)' is a network project which aims to open up how Europe's contested identity and place within the world shape and draw together both academic research and public discourse. Using the methodologies of cultural memory studies, IPMEG aims to theorize a fully European framework for the study of the medieval past in the global 21st Century. Such a framework encompasses multiple roots, minority narratives, and non-European perspectives; critically it also sets aside still dominant nationalizing approaches to the Middle Ages.

This framework offers an excellent opportunity to consider the IMC 2014 theme of 'Empire'. Actively remembering the Greek (Alexandrian) and Roman Empires was an influential political and cultural discourse in medieval Europe. Likewise, later Europeans have been interested in the multiple influences the Greco-Roman empires exerted on medieval Europe.

Key questions may include:

• How was the Empire evoked (in the Middle Ages and subsequently) as a common heritage and transnational force for European integration and how was it deployed to achieve the opposite (division in East and West, Roman versus German, etc.)?

• To what extent has the Greco-Roman empire been appropriated by Europeans, both medieval and modern, even though it extended well beyond Europe? How far has this position been challenged by other heirs of the Greco-Roman world?

• How can such cultural memories be connected to comparative approaches that until recently have taken the Roman Empire as the imperial model for modern empires (particularly British and American)?

• All of these notions of empire are very much shaped in Europe. What different ideas and experiences of Empire (within or outside Europe) are productive and/or challenging when working comparatively?

Participants include Penelope Goodman (University of Leeds), Christian Høgel (Syddansk Universitet), Zara Pogossian (John Cabot University, Rome), and Felicitas Schmieder (FernUniversität Hagen).