Visigothic Symposium 3, 2018-2020: Communication and Circulation (PDF) (*En Español aquí)

To what extent did rural and urban populaces around the Visigothic Kingdom interact with each other? How did they share stories and relate memories? To what degree did they visit and house relatives and friends from other communities? What about beyond the ‘borders’ and / or at the peripheries, of the Peninsula, of the towns, of the roads, of the mind, of families and communities sharing the same urban centers? How common was communication between nearby, everyday or distant neighbors? To what extent was there a meta-sense of belonging in the region, whether locally or by shared sensibilities of Mediterranean existence, by Jewish belief and heritage, by fidelity to Catholic theology, by practices of rural religion, by languages and dialectics, or even by a sense of ‘barbarian’ identity, an imagined pan-Gothicness?

Expressions, desired associations, networks of thoughts and meanings and their traversal within and between individuals, institutions, texts and ‘architexts’ form the core of the intended discussions of VgS 3, the third Visigothic Symposium. VgS 3 will interrogate these issues by offering essays across the themes: ‘communication’ and ‘circulation’. The aim is to elicit examples of what we may call personal and communal ‘neighboring’ in early medieval Iberia, the broader Visigothic Kingdom(s?) and the wider Mediterranean region. We envision the essays of VgS 3 pursuing, lifting from the land of the period’s narrations – literary and material – that which exposes also the modes of transference, connection and representation that characterized real and imagined lives. Interdisciplinary in our reading of Visigothic Iberia, VgS 3 extends the scope of analysis and historiography to the gaze from the ‘outside’ – Ostrogothic Italy, Rome, Vandal-Visigothic Sardinia, Lombards, Corsica – of the Iberian tableaux vivant.

ISSN 2475-7462

Editors: Dolores Castro & Michael J. Kelly

Program 

Introduction

Panel 1: Communication

Panel 2: Circulation

Response Papers

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