Panel Title: "National Borders and Medieval Spaces"

This panel investigates the role modern national geographic, linguistic and textual borders play in our understanding and reading of the medieval past. Under question in this panel are concepts related to pure vs. hybrid languages, genres and literatures, national literary canons, borders and border spaces, and the idea of community, whether political, literary, or otherwise. Ideally this panel includes a broad range of
European literary traditions and aims to problematize the divide between medieval and modern. The notion of borders is broadly conceived and can address nation, discipline, time, genre, gender, etc. Areas of investigation might include:

• Ninteenth-century medievalisms and nation building.
• Franco-Italian epic and national canon creation.
• Questioning generic boundaries between epic and romance.
• The idea of Old French: the French of England, Italy, etc.
• The idea of nation and patria in the Middle Ages.
• Identity, gender and sexuality as it relates to borders, modern and medieval.
• Post-colonial interpretations of the Middle Ages and temporal decolonization.
• Conceptions of geography and space, modern and medieval.

Abstracts between 250-300 words for papers of 15 minutes are invited by 10 August 2010. The abstract should also include a 50-word biographical note and AV requests.

We will send acceptances by 1 October 2010.

Contact: Steve McCormick, University of Oregon, Department of Romance Languages, smccormi@uoregon.edu