personhood and collective identities
Mary A. ValAnte (Appalachian State university) and bevin butler (tennessee tech university)

  

This thread asks us to consider how medieval people constructed and expressed individual identities within the groups they identified with, and how individuals contributed to collective identities. 

These collective identities might include social identities, cultural identities, community identities – any type of shared or group identity. Community identities need not be exclusive; an individual might see themselves as part of multiple communities, related to family, community, gender, sexuality, or more. Communities might be formed around  work or economic status or politics. The communities any person identified with might change over time. Protective communities might exist within larger communities.

We are seeking papers on themes that might include (but are not limited to):

  • Creating, maintaining and disrupting medieval community identities
  • Carrying identities with you and creating new communities
  • Women’s voices and women’s communities
  • The ways marginalized persons created communities
  • Teaching community identities
  • The ways modern people have misunderstood or deliberately miscast medieval collective identities
  • The roles of memory and emotion in identity
  • Social cohesion and the role of trauma in collective identity

 

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