How Global Were the Middle Ages? (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Interdisciplinary Graduate Medieval Colloquium, Univ. of Virginia
Organizer Name
DeVan Ard
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Virginia
Presider Name
Zachary E. Stone
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Virginia
Paper Title 1
Discussant
Presenter 1 Name
Christina Normore
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Northwestern Univ.
Paper Title 2
Arabic's Gutenberg: Cultural Difference through the Lens of Print
Presenter 2 Name
Erica Machulak
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Notre Dame
Paper Title 3
Discussant
Presenter 3 Name
Dorothy Wong
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Virginia
Paper Title 4
The Role of Political Memory in the Assessment of Historical Periods
Presenter 4 Name
Aman Nadhiri
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Johnson C. Smith Univ.
Paper Title 5
Discussant
Presenter 5 Name
Raihan Ahmed
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Univ. of Virginia
Start Date
11-5-2017 10:00 AM
Session Location
Valley II LeFevre 201
Description
The failures of traditional periodization are nowhere more evident than when Western scholars approach non-Western cultures, religions, and/or political formations under the rubric of “middleness.” Even as projects such as the “Global Middle Ages” seek to broaden the geographic scope of medieval studies, which has for too long ignored the cultural production of non-European, non-Western societies, such endeavors import assumptions about modernization and enlightenment that may obscure as much as they reveal about the peoples and places they study. And if scholars such as Charles Taylor and Talal Asad have re-shaped our understanding of secularization over the past two decades, they have no doubt also reinforced the contingency of that process and the vulnerability of a hermeneutic of progress.
The expansion of the Islamicate empires (Abbasid, Ayyubid, etc.), for instance, is often treated as paradigmatically medieval, primarily due to the cultural flourishing of Baghdad and Andalusia during the period 1000-1400. Yet many of the constitutive cultural, political, and economic features of these empires lived on into the twentieth century with the Ottoman Empire, which was abolished only in 1922. Further examples could be adduced to demonstrate the limited applicability of the “medieval/modern” binary to economies, societies, and cultures of Asia and the global South. For those who study issues and text beyond the Latin West, the narrative of modernization and enlightenment serves little purpose beyond the administrative necessities of the contemporary university.
This roundtable invites scholars to discuss the effects of studying global cultures with and without the optic of Western European periodization. What alternative periodizations do these cultures offer? And how might they in turn reconfigure the conception of “middleness” in study of Western Latin culture?
DeVan Ard
How Global Were the Middle Ages? (A Roundtable)
Valley II LeFevre 201
The failures of traditional periodization are nowhere more evident than when Western scholars approach non-Western cultures, religions, and/or political formations under the rubric of “middleness.” Even as projects such as the “Global Middle Ages” seek to broaden the geographic scope of medieval studies, which has for too long ignored the cultural production of non-European, non-Western societies, such endeavors import assumptions about modernization and enlightenment that may obscure as much as they reveal about the peoples and places they study. And if scholars such as Charles Taylor and Talal Asad have re-shaped our understanding of secularization over the past two decades, they have no doubt also reinforced the contingency of that process and the vulnerability of a hermeneutic of progress.
The expansion of the Islamicate empires (Abbasid, Ayyubid, etc.), for instance, is often treated as paradigmatically medieval, primarily due to the cultural flourishing of Baghdad and Andalusia during the period 1000-1400. Yet many of the constitutive cultural, political, and economic features of these empires lived on into the twentieth century with the Ottoman Empire, which was abolished only in 1922. Further examples could be adduced to demonstrate the limited applicability of the “medieval/modern” binary to economies, societies, and cultures of Asia and the global South. For those who study issues and text beyond the Latin West, the narrative of modernization and enlightenment serves little purpose beyond the administrative necessities of the contemporary university.
This roundtable invites scholars to discuss the effects of studying global cultures with and without the optic of Western European periodization. What alternative periodizations do these cultures offer? And how might they in turn reconfigure the conception of “middleness” in study of Western Latin culture?
DeVan Ard