On The Road: Travels, Pilgrimages and Social Interaction
University of Tampere, Finland
6-8 August, 2015
Conference Website
The sixth international Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages conference will focus on social approaches to travelling, mobility, pilgrimages, and cultural exchange. Interaction between society and space has been a key interest of scholars after the ‘Spatial Turn’. Nevertheless, larger comparisons between eras and cultures are mainly missing. The archetypal journey of Odysseys served as a metaphor and model for later narrations of travelling. In both Ancient and medieval worlds, religious
reasons were significant motivations for travelling; these travels confront the traditional idea of these periods as eras of immobility. However, the challenges of setting out for a journey, as well as the dangers of the road, were not dependent on the incentive but rather on distance and other geographical settings, social status of the traveller, and political climate.
The conference aims at concentrating on social and cultural interaction before, during and after travelling. What kinds of motivations were there for ancient and medieval people to get on the road and what kind of negotiations and networks were inherent in travelling? We welcome papers, which have a sensitive approach to social differences: gender, age, health, and status. Actors, experiences and various levels of negotiations are of main interest, and our focus lies on society and the history of everyday life, on the differences and similarities between elite and popular culture, and on the expectations linked to gender and life cycle stage, visible in the practices and policies of travelling. We encourage proposals that integrate the theme of travelling into wider larger social and cultural contexts. We aim at a broad coverage not only chronologically but also geographically and disciplinarily (all branches of Classical, Byzantine and Medieval Studies). Most preferable are contributions that have themselves a comparative and/or interdisciplinary viewpoint or focusing on a *longue durée* perspective.
If interested, please submit an abstract of 300 words (setting out thesis and conclusions) for a twenty-minute paper together with your contact details (with academic affiliation, address and e-mail) by e-mail attachment to the conference secretary, passages@uta.fi.
The deadline for abstracts is September 15th 2014, and the notification of paper acceptance will be made in November 2014.
Conference papers may also be presented in French, German or Italian, however, supplied with an English summary (as a hand-out) or translation if the language of presentation is not English. The sessions are formed on the basis of thematic coherence of the papers and comparisons between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, thus session proposals focusing on one period only will not be accepted.
The registration fee is 100 € (doctoral students: 50 €). For further information, please visit http://www.uta.fi/trivium/passages or contact the organizers by sending an e-mail to passages@uta.fi. The registration opens in November 2014 on this website.