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The Middle Ages are understood as a most barbarous period; a time when conflict was fought out on the battlefields with bloodshed and brutality.
This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference seeks to examine this idea, both broadening an understanding of warfare and violence in the medieval period, as well as analysing other ways in which difference was articulated and (un)resolved at individual, societal and national levels.
Delegates may also wish to consider how our own twenty-first century sensibilities affect our understanding of conflict in premodern cultures.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
The role of trauma in shaping national and individual identities
Manifestations of discord within the organisations intended
to regulate society; church, government and monarchy
Spectacular violence and public displays of brutality
Heretical subjects and deviance in Christological culture
The politicised uses of violent images in written and visual narratives
Political conflicts and the distribution of power
Inner conflicts and anxieties about personal selfhood
Representations of conflict in familial or domestic spheres
Representations of medieval conflict in post-medieval culture
Papers from early career researchers are also welcome