Convivencia in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula
Conference - Convivencia: Representations, Knowledge and Identities, 500 - 1600 a.d., Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (MPG), 27 - 30 May 2009.
Convivencia is traditionally the term for designing the cooperative and conflictual coexistence of Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. The conference studied this phenomenon with regard to the interacting dimensions of representations, knowledge and identities. Representation stands for all forms of cultural production in art, religion, literature, science and law. Knowledge includes not only science but also forms of practical, social as well as other forms of knowledge. The concept of identity refers to the individual and collective imaging of the self and the other.
The aim of the conference was to address a formative period of Europe with its cultural and religious heterogeneity from a multidisciplinary perspective. The encounters and exchanges between Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities and elites constitute a historical laboratory of great significance for understanding interaction and transformation processes of cultures in the millennium between the decline of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the early modern period. Aspects of these processes have been studied by single disciplines in an isolated manner. The challenge of the conference was to overcome such division and focus instead on overarching questions which create an intense dialogue and collaboration between the disciplines themselves.
The following papers were of particular interest: Abdellah Hammoudi (Princeton University), Public lecture: Giving and Receiving Yeast: How to Keep Differing Identities Together; David Nirenberg (The University of Chicago), Public lecture: Convivencia y conflicto en Iberia; Angelika Neuwirth (Freie Universität Berlin), The Qur’an – A Text of Late Antiquity; Andreina Contessa (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), The Visualization of the Heavens in Medieval Manuscripts: From Ancient Astronomical Imagery to Christian Scientific Illustration; Regula Forster (Freie Universität Berlin), Transmission of Knowledge through Literature: The Literary Frames of the Pseudo - Aristotelian Sirr al-Asrar and Kitab al-Tuffaha; Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute London), Gates of Paradise. Getting into Medieval Spain; Cynthia Robinson, (Cornell University), Purposeful Polyvalence: Christ, the Virgin, Polemic and Devotions in a Multi-Confessional Castile (15th c.); Beatrice Gruendler (Yale University), Books, Notes, and Words: Communicative Choices on the Eve of Arabic-Islamic Book Culture (3rd Century AH/9th Century CE); Felipe Pereda (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Sacred Images and Conversions in Early Modern Spain; Maria Rosa Menocal (Yale University), On Convivencia; Esperanza Alfonso (CSIC Madrid), The Forgotten Sheaf: Exegesis and Poetry from Granada to Tlemcen; José Martinez Gázquez (Universidad Autònoma Barcelona), The Representation of Islam in Medieval Texts of the “Corpus Islamolatinum”; Rosa María Rodriguez Porto (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), Anatopic Visions, Displaced Conflicts. Translations of Romans Antiques in Medieval Castile; and Avinoam Shalem (LMU München), Face to Face: Cordoba and Baghdad.
For further details view the site of the conference or the program in full
