WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, WHERE DID YOU GO? ORIGIN NARRATIVES AND THE HISTORY OF PEOPLES, PLACES AND IDEAS
27-29 JUNE 2018 | ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Tuesday 26th June

8pm Onwards: ‘Meet and Greet’ at the Ship and Castle Pub (All welcome!)


Wednesday 27th June

10:30 – 11:15 – Registration

11:15–11:30 –  Welcome and Introduction

 

11:30-13:00 – Session 1:

Chair: Abby Monk (Aberystwyth)

From Ilium to Iceland: Creating and Defending Cultural Identity in Snorri’s Ynglinga Saga – Harriet Clark (Nottingham)

‘His time will always be spoken of as good’: Kingship and succession in commemorative skaldic poetry – Lucie Hobson (Cambridge)

Alexander, master of clerecía? Revisiting the functionalities of the Libro de Alexandre Mariana Leite (Porto)

13:00 – 14:00 – Lunch

 

14:00 – 15:30 – Session 2:

Chair: Antoni Grabowski (Warsaw)

Cináed mac Ailpin as primus rex Scottorum. The construction of the origins of the Scottish identity in the “Chronicle of the Kings of Alba” – Franziska Quaas (Hamburg)

Localised Saints Cults and the Spread of Dedications in Early Medieval mid-Wales – Amy Reynolds (Bangor)

Old Bones, New Soups: Was Beowulf Ever an Origin Story? – Catalin Taranu (Bucharest)

15:30 – 16:00 Break

 

16:15 – 17:45 Keynote Lecture

Chair: Kiri Kolt (Aberystwyth)

The Bavarians and their origin – the ‘foundlings’ of the Early Middle Ages? – Alheydis Plassmann (Bonn)

19:30 – Dinner at Medina (SY23 1DL)


Thursday 28th June

9:30 – 11:00  Session 3

Chair: TBA

The new heroes, the new miles Christi on the example of the Bella antiochena of Walter the Chancellor – Olga Pełech (Wrocław)

Old Tales for a New Gens. Grafting History in the High Middle Ages – Antoni Grabowski (Warsaw)

Transferring Historical Identity and Legitimacy: Caesar, Rome and the Germans in the 12th century Middle High German Kaiserchronik – Christoph Pretzer (King’s College London/Cambridge)

11:00 – 11:30 Break

 

11:30-13:00 Session 4:

Chair: Rhun Emlyn (Aberystwyth)

Shaping the image of enemy – some examples of the language of exclusion in the sources of the First Crusade – Tomasz Pełech (Wrocław/Clermont-Auvergne)

‘What’s in a name?’: Etymologising Normannus in the Duchy of Normandy – Eric Wolever (York)

Cloistered Refuge – The Origins of Saint-Évroult and exile in Orderic Vitalis – Abby Monk (Aberystwyth)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

 

14:00 – 15:30 Session 5:

Chair: Kiri Kolt (Aberystwyth)

The memory of a founding bishop in the thirteenth-century foundation narrative of the Danish Cistercian abbey of Øm – Gunvor Platou (Cambridge)

Three’s a Crowd: Chronicle Sources for The Origin Narratives of the Bianchi Devotions in 1399 – Alexandra Lee (University College London)

To be or not be (a goth): gothic origins and the construction of identity of Iberian kingdoms (10th – 12th centuries) – Joana Gomes (Porto)

15:30 – 16:00 Break

 

16:00 – 17:30 Keynote Lecture

Chair: Björn Weiler (Aberystwyth)

Forging Origins of St Peter’s, Ghent: Reality Fictions and Histories – Robert Berkhofer (WMU and President of the Haskins Society)

19:30 Dinner at Cassablanca (SY23 2AR) Bring your own alcohol!


Friday 29th June

9:30 – 11:00 Keynote Lecture

Chair: Abbey Monk

Origin Myths in the Medieval North: an overview – Haki Antonsson (UCL)

11:00 – 11:30 Break

 

11:30 – 13:00 Session 6:

Chair: TBA

Redefining the Ducal past: Norman identities in the Chronique de Normandie – Alex Hurlow (Manchester)

Poles as an autochthonous people: Vincent Kadłubek’s origio gentis – Marcin Kurdyka (Chambéry)

A woman as the ‘real founder’: The role of females in 12th-century foundation legends – Kiri Kolt (Aberystwyth)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

 

14:00 – 15:30 Session 7:

Chair: TBA

Albina: failed female founder? Founders and the act of founding in the ‘Albina’ Prologue of The Middle English Prose Brut Chronicle – Madelaine Smart (Liverpool)

Three crowns of Brutus – an idea of a universal insular kingdom – Jakub Jauernig (Prague)

15:30 – 15:45 Concluding remarks and close

15:30 – Coffee and Cake

 

19:30 Dinner (TBC)