Strangers and Neighbors: Hostility and Hospitality in Late Medieval/Early Modern European Contexts
May 6-8, 2021 • London Global Gateway
All lodging expenses for paper presenters will be reimbursed. Some meals provided. Please send an abstract no longer than 200 words and an abbreviated CV to strangers@nd.edu before July 1, 2020. Decisions will be released on or before September 15, 2020. Proposals by advanced graduate students will be considered.
Is the foreigner friend or foe? The rhetoric around immigration has become ever more heated as globalization, climate change, pandemics, civil wars and proxy wars, the ease of travel, and cross-cultural exchange and encounter have rapidly increased. In the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, a similar intensity in such activity within Europe and outside its borders dominated everything from literature to politics to religion.A nascent xenophobia makes itself known in disputes between different peoples, of course, but also between members of the same culture. In France, for example, Protestants were often considered a foreign element to be excised.
On the other hand, foreigners often fascinated the natives or served as a political tool of comparison in their attempts to affirm or purify their own culture. Either way,
representations of and interactions with the foreigner could reveal ambiguity with respect to the newcomer but also within one’s own culture. The stranger could quickly become … READ MORE