CONGRESS CANCELED Xenophobia and Border Walls: Monstrous Foreigners and Polities
Description
Who is that knight, threatening “our” town walls? Why are they roaming outside, besieging “our” castle? What shall we do with all these [Jewish], [Muslim], [Saracen], [Genoese], [pilgrim] people coming to this area, “robbing us of our jobs” and taking up our lands? As Jeffrey Cohen writes, “all the familiar stereotypes about foreigners, medieval and modern, find their place here: they make too much noise, they smell bad, they eat repulsive foods, their excess is disgusting” (emphasis added). Our current political environment makes these ideas more pressing, as xenophobia runs rampant and walls are (re)built.
Medieval and early modern representations of foreigners as a threat are not that different from our own. With this in mind, MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals invite papers delving into pre- and early modern representations of contacts between cultures, races, religions, and even species from diverse disciplines and methodological approaches. Of particular interest are constructions of monstrosity in chivalric epic and romances. Asa S. Mittman
CONGRESS CANCELED Xenophobia and Border Walls: Monstrous Foreigners and Polities
Fetzer 2030
Who is that knight, threatening “our” town walls? Why are they roaming outside, besieging “our” castle? What shall we do with all these [Jewish], [Muslim], [Saracen], [Genoese], [pilgrim] people coming to this area, “robbing us of our jobs” and taking up our lands? As Jeffrey Cohen writes, “all the familiar stereotypes about foreigners, medieval and modern, find their place here: they make too much noise, they smell bad, they eat repulsive foods, their excess is disgusting” (emphasis added). Our current political environment makes these ideas more pressing, as xenophobia runs rampant and walls are (re)built.
Medieval and early modern representations of foreigners as a threat are not that different from our own. With this in mind, MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals invite papers delving into pre- and early modern representations of contacts between cultures, races, religions, and even species from diverse disciplines and methodological approaches. Of particular interest are constructions of monstrosity in chivalric epic and romances. Asa S. Mittman