ON THE ROAD TRAVELS, PILGRIMAGES AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

University of Tampere, Finland
6. - 8. August, 2015


CALL FOR PAPERS (deadline September 15th 2014)

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.

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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 EUR (doctoral students: 50 EUR). 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 at
http://www.uta.fi/trivium/passages.