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IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1222: The Reproduction of Medieval Identity, Ethnicity, and Nationhood, III

Wednesday 5 July 2017, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Birmingham Research Institute for History & Cultures (BRIHC), University of Birmingham / The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), University of Oxford
Organiser:Ilya Afanasyev, Birmingham Research Institute for History & Cultures, University of Birmingham / The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, University of Oxford
Moderator/Chair:James Michael Harland, Department of Arts, Design & Social Sciences, Northumbria University
Paper 1222-aThe Intersection of Urban and Ethnic Identities in Medieval Central Asia
(Language: English)
Arezou Azad, School of History & Cultures, University of Birmingham
Index terms: Political Thought, Social History
Paper 1222-bCut, Copy, and Paste: Urban Identities, Textual Reproduction, and 'Sameness' in Late Medieval England and Ireland
(Language: English)
Eliza Hartrich, Department of History, University of Sheffield
Index terms: Political Thought, Social History
Paper 1222-cNatione Moscus: To Be Muscovite in 16th- and 17th-Century Europe
(Language: English)
Konstantin Erusalimsky, Department of History & Theory of Culture, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
Index terms: Political Thought, Social History
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. This third session will examine the interplay between urban and ethnic identities across medieval Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.