The convenors warmly invite proposals for papers for the conference Ambiguities of Hospitality in the Middle Ages, 1000-1350, to be held at Stockholm University on the 8-9th September 2022. The conference is open to established and early career researchers as well as graduate students, and to scholars of the Middle Ages of all disciplinary backgrounds, including but not limited to historians, archaeologists as well as scholars of literature and art.
Situations and occasions of hospitality are often considered to have played a socially integrative role. During the Middle Ages host-guest relations were routinely used to create social bonds, assure peace, and establish participants’ identities. What has not been sufficiently explored, however, are the risks associated with such relations and the ways hospitality had to be negotiated or could potentially fail to produce trust between parties. This ambiguous, occasionally disruptive character of host-guest was felt particularly acutely on the borderlands during the expansion of the Latin European culture in the High Middle Ages, c.1000-1350. Focusing on the ambiguous aspects of hospitality will help us understand how medieval people exercised, conceptualized, and exploited it in intercultural meetings and relations.
The conference will explore the ambiguities of hospitality as it manifests itself in cultural, social, and political relations and phenomena in the central medieval period. We welcome proposals focusing on anyone or more region in the global middle ages.