‘Race’, Divisive Law and Group Identity in Medieval Europe
Conference – 7 and 8 September 2023
Swansea University, UK (in association with Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland)
Call for Papers, deadline – 1 July 2023 at 5.00 pm
The process of colonisation at the European ‘peripheries’ (e.g. Wales, Ireland, Prussia, Livonia, reconquest Spain, the Levant, etc.), increasing legal consciousness and categorisation, and growing self-awareness among literary, occupational and political communities transformed the social and political landscape of later medieval Europe’s core and peripheral areas alike. This conference shall bring together exciting new perspectives on processes of group formation, group legal and social articulation, and interaction between groups and authorities, broadly conceived
This will be an interdisciplinary conference welcoming historians, art historians, archaeologists, literary scholars and sociologists. It will discuss the complex relationships that existed between two or more of: formulations of ‘race’ (biological, ethnic, linguistic or proto-national), divisive laws and identity groups. We welcome perspectives incorporating, for example: colonisation, urbanisation, spiritual space, integration/assimilation, rebellion, minority experience, self-expression, material culture, contemporary group characterisations.