Co-sponsored by European Studies and the Karpat Center for Turkish Studies.
This workshop explores how medieval authors constructed and negotiated categories of identity—both of themselves and of the “Other”—through language, geography, and cultural heritage across the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. It examines how these evolving definitions, preserved in medieval Greek and Arabic sources, shaped and were shaped by perceptions of political, cultural, and religious boundaries in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean.
The discussion will be framed around Professor Durak’s articles: “Who are the Romans? The Definition of Bilād al-Rūm (Land of the Romans) in Medieval Islamic Geographies” and “Defining the ‘Turk’: Mechanisms of Establishing Contemporary Meaning in the Archaizing Language of the Byzantines.”
Graduate students in particular are warmly encouraged to attend !
