IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1246: Remembering Walter Goffart, III: Ethnicity and Identity
Wednesday 8 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Organiser: | Jeroen W. P. Wijnendaele, Gerda Henkel Stiftung / Vakgroep Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Antonia Pia Knöpges, Institut für Alte Geschichte, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf |
| Paper 1246-a | Interrogating the 'Germanic' Once Again: A Response to the Critics (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - General, Historiography - Modern Scholarship |
| Paper 1246-b | Mapping Ethnicity in Verse: The Anthologia Latina and the Mechanics of Identity in Vandal North Africa (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Political Thought |
| Paper 1246-c | Writing Brythonic Identity against the Saxons: From Gildas to Armes Prydein Vawr, 6th-10th Centuries (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Historiography - Medieval |
| Abstract | Walter Goffart always took a critical and skeptical stance on scholarly approaches to the figure of “the barbarian”, most famously in demolishing the concept of “the Germanic”. The current session pursues that line of thinking, by assessing current approaches to ethnicity and identity in Late Antique and Early Medieval studies. These range from questioning the resurrection of the old status quo vis-à-vis ‘Germanic’ ethnicity (applied to, inter alia, the legal codes and genetic studies), the literary appropriation of Roman models to legitimize non-Roman rule in North Africa, and the participation in the post-Roman reinvention of the past by British authors - previously on the margins of Empire - deep into the Early Middle Ages. |