IMC 2026: Sessions

Like the ancient Roman god Janus bifrons - the deity of beginnings and transitions - the Middle Ages looks simultaneously backward and forward. Far from being a mere 'Dark Age', it was a period of incubation, inheritance, and transmission: an era that absorbed and reshaped earlier experiences while also projecting itself, whether positively or critically, into the future. Within this broader frame, the session shifts attention away from medieval events per se to the ways in which earlier epochs were perceived, reimagined, and reconfigured in the medieval centuries, as well as to the enduring afterlife of medieval culture in modernity and the present. Presentations thus explore themes of reuse, repurposing, and long-term utility, asking how the medieval world built upon its own past while concurrently becoming a resource for subsequent ages. Objects, ideas, practices, and cultural narratives alike reveal these intricate temporal entanglements.

Participants include Adinel C. Dincă (Facultatea de Istorie și Filosofie, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca), Monica Brînzei (Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (IRHT), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris), Guðmundur Hálfdánarson (Hugvísindasvið, Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavík), Lavinia-Snejana Costea (Facultatea de Istorie și Filosofie, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca), Ștefana Cristea (Centrul de Diplomatică și Paleografie Documentară Medievală (TRANS.SCRIPT), Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca), Alexandru Simon (Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Academia Română, București), Suzana Simon (Zavod za povijesne i društvene znanosti, Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zagreb))