UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Department of Romance, Classical and Modern Greek
Languages and Literatures
Bucharest, 19th-20th June 2020
It is well known that the cultures of the Iberian Peninsula have been depicted from a variety of perspectives, but often as a peripheral border zone both separating and connecting Europe, Asia and Africa. From the Middle Ages to the present, cultural, economic and political exchanges, taking place within this space have served to define the ideological boundaries not only of Iberia but also of Europe itself. The history and legacy of medieval Iberia —whether imagined as Al Andalus, Sepharad, or multiple Christian kingdoms— shows how one geographical territory has been transformed into a chronotope, an ideologically charged place in time, that allows for the definition and contestation of some of the key concepts that have defined the idea of Europe: ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, ‘tolerance’, or the binaries East and West, North and South.
Jacques Le Goff rhetorically asked if Europe was born in the Middle Ages: L´Europe est-elle née au Moyen Age? (2003). The title of his book demonstrates the importance of Europe’s medieval past in defining its present and offering alternate or oppositional histories. Although the history (or rather histories) of Iberia offers a rich harvest of case studies, it is not the only place from which to study the ambiguous and fraught relation between Europe and its imagined margins.
The International Workshop, Centre and Peripheries. The Idea of Europe in the Middle Ages, Early Modernity and Beyond aims at gathering together scholars who work on medieval and Early Modern texts, as well as on modern testimonies and visions of the pre-modern past that help shape and throw into question the very notion of a homogenous ‘European’ identity.
The event is organized by the Spanish Early Modernity Studies (University of Bucharest) in collaboration with researchers from three international networks: Language Acts and Worldmaking ‘Travelling Concepts’ strand, (King’s College London), Seminario de Poética del Renacimiento ‘Censura, textualidad y conflicto’ (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and the project ‘Leer y escribir la nación: mitos e imaginarios literarios de España (1831-1879)’ (Universidad de Cádiz). Our collaboration brings together researchers from various fields —History (of Ideas, of Art, politics, mentalities, etc.), Philology, Poetics, Literary History, Religious Studies— in order to generate interdisciplinary reflection on the topic.
CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
JULIAN WEISS, King´s College London
MARÍA JOSÉ VEGA RAMOS, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
Contact: silvia.stefan@lls.unibuc.ro
ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD:
Julian Weiss (King´s College London)
María José Vega Ramos (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Fernando José Murillo Pancorbo (University of Basel)
Silvia-Alexandra Ștefan (University of Bucharest)
ORGANIZING BOARD:
Silvia-Alexandra Ștefan (University of Bucharest)
Carolina Hernando Carrera (University of Bucharest)
Sorina-Dora Simion (University of Bucharest)
Mihai Enăchescu (University of Bucharest)