Subtheme:
Borders and Border Crossing

Every space of refuge is delineated by a border—whether physical, geographical, political, or social. In turn, these borders often become sites of resistance. Transgressing borders is a common anxiety and liberatory action in many medieval texts, from the selectively destructive Red Sea crossing in the Old English poetic Exodus to the freedom Lanval finds with his fairy consort in Marie de France’s lai. By considering borders within a frame of resistance and refuge, this subtheme hopes to broaden conversations about the limits that medieval writers (and current medieval scholars) explore in their work, drawing attention to people and objects that operate in the margins. 

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We invite proposals exploring both the nature of borders and their permeability. We also encourage expansive and creative definitions of “borders”—from geopolitical to material, from environmental to social, from temporal to textual. Possible topics of consideration include:

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• Historical conceptions of borders as sites of refuge or resistance

• Literary borders between genres

• Exile politics and legal subversion

• The borders between main text, marginalia, and illumination in medieval manuscripts

• Literary tropes regarding geographic space (e.g. urban v. rural divides)

• Bodily borders 

• Modern limitations on medievalism and medieval adaptation

For instance, how did medieval people perceive political borders—whether encompassing a parish, a kingdom, or “Christendom”—and what in ways did groups cross those borders? How do medieval texts establish or trouble genre categories? In what ways did various groups resist, subvert, or escape the boundaries of the law? Do the spatial boundaries of a manuscript make it a sort of “refuge” for radical thought or literature? What opportunities or dangers lie at the borders of a (historical or fictional) forest or wilderness? What boundaries define social groups—from guilds to gender categories—and what resistance might those boundaries have faced? And what are the perceived borders (temporal, spatial, or cultural) of the medieval period itself?