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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1614: Negotiating Medieval Iberian Borderlands

Thursday 9 July 2020, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) / Texas Medieval Association (TEMA)
Organiser:Erica Buchberger, Department of History, University of Texas
Moderator/Chair:Maya Soifer Irish, Department of History, Rice University, Texas
Paper 1614-aAn African Frontier?: Breaking the Conceptual Borders between Iberia and the Maghreb in the Early Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Mark Lewis Tizzoni, Department of History, Angelo State University, Texas
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Mentalities
Paper 1614-bNegotiating Ethnicity and Religion in a 9th-Century Borderland: Pelayo in the Asturian Chronicles
(Language: English)
Erica Buchberger, Department of History, University of Texas
Index terms: Demography, Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities
Paper 1614-cThieves, Liars, and Murderers: The Basques, the Navarrese, and the Historiography of the Disaster at Roncesvalles
(Language: English)
Anne Latowsky, Department of World Languages, University of South Florida
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 1614-dReligious Contact and the Thin Border between the Natural and Supernatural Worlds in Two Scenes from the Libro del caballero Zifar
(Language: English)
Veronica Menaldi, Department of Modern Languages University of Mississippi
Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese
Abstract

It has long been recognized that the 'border' between Christian and Muslim Iberia was not a tidy line but a fluid border region of shifting alliances, diverse layers of identity, and code-switching. Myths of clear-cut divisions were built through various stages of narrative and artistic construction for specific purposes in specific eras, and not always around the Christian-Muslim divide. There were many other active borderlands where territory, identities, and ideas were negotiated. This session aims to draw attention to these other borders - with Francia and Africa, within Iberian Christendom, and playing out in literary metaphor and narrative.