IMC 2017: Sessions
Session 1022: The Reproduction of Medieval Identity, Ethnicity, and Nationhood, I
Wednesday 5 July 2017, 09.00-10.30
Sponsor: | Birmingham Research Institute for History & Cultures (BRIHC), University of Birmingham / The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), University of Oxford |
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Organiser: | Ilya Afanasyev, Birmingham Research Institute for History & Cultures, University of Birmingham / The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, University of Oxford |
Moderator/Chair: | Ilya Afanasyev, Birmingham Research Institute for History & Cultures, University of Birmingham / The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, University of Oxford |
Paper 1022-a | The Relationship of Ethnicity, Nations, and States in the Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Political Thought |
Paper 1022-b | Armenians in East Roman Cappadocia, c. 900-1071: Settlement, the State Apparatus, and the Material Reproduction of Ethnicity (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Social History |
Paper 1022-c | 'National' Past and 'National' Continuity in the Establishment of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, 1180s-1230s (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval |
Abstract | In this series of sessions organised by 'The long history of identity, ethnicity, and nationhood' research network, sponsored by Birmingham Research Institute for History and Cultures (BRIHC) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), we will focus on the reproduction of collective identities in the Middle Ages. While a generic constructivist approach is widely shared in research on pre-modern identities, it often remains uncritical. On the one hand, it sometimes conceals latent essentialism (best represented by the formula 'identities are constructed, but having been constructed become real'), and, on the other hand, restricts our capacity to arrive at a systemic understanding of how exactly collective identities are asserted and reproduced over long periods of time. Hence, our main goal is to tackle the difficult question of long-term reproduction of the same projected identities, often alongside broadly similar constructs, without resorting to essentialist or objectifying explanations. In the first session, Susan Reynolds will revisit a debate on the key concepts involved in understanding past identities, while two other papers will theorise the reproduction of two identifications (Armenian and Bulgarian) in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus. |