IMC 2022: Sessions

This second panel explores how medieval borders fostered multilingual and multicultural processes, thus demonstrating how frontiers not only separate, but also promote integration. Through the study of onomastic systems and loanwords, Paper -a demonstrates how modern Italian shows evident traces of the contact between Germanic tribes (Goths, Lombards, Franks) and the local Latin-speaking communities, thus demonstrating the fluidity of linguistic borders in early medieval Italy. Paper -b explores the expansion of the Swiss Confederation in the Late Middle Ages as it cut across borders, incorporating culturally and linguistically diverse regions, which, however, identified themselves politically and historically as part of the Holy Roman Empire. Paper -c analyses the socio-cultural aspects of hegemony by looking at the stigmatisation of the brat, a typical Irish garment in early modern England, which became a marker of social otherness, thus reflecting the hierarchical social organization of 16th-century England.