Annual Marco Symposium

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18th Annual Symposium

“Religious Communities Across Space and Time in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East”

March 4-5, 2022

 

The Marco Institute’s 18^th annual symposium brings together scholars of the medieval and early modern world to examine how religious communities conceptualized and imagined themselves. The symposium will feature specialists whose geographic interests include Africa, the Middle East and Europe. “Community,” therefore, will be interpreted broadly to include not only world systems such as oikumene, ummah or ecclesia, but also local communities such as individual mosques, monasteries or synagogues. Furthermore, papers will investigate how interactions between religious communities shaped their identities and experiences. The symposium will explore the diversity and complexity of pre-modern notions of religious communities across a wide range of geographic, confessional and temporal boundaries.

The “Religious Communities” Symposium is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Symposium committee: Manuela Ceballos, Matthew Bryan Gillis, Felege Yirga.

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Program Information:

Keynote Lecture: Friday, March 4 at 5:30 pm

Lindsay Young Auditorium, Hodges Library, 1st Floor

Emily Gottreich, University of California, Berkeley

“The Jewish umma: Middle Eastern and North African Jewry and the Development of an Islamicate Community”

 

Friday, March 4

VENUE: Great Room, UT International House

8:45-9:15 Continental Breakfast, UT International House

9:25-9:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks by Gregor A. Kalas, Riggsby Director of Marco

9:30-11:00 Section I: Ethnicity, Ideology, and Memory

Sean Anthony, The Ohio State University, “The Ummah and the Arabs: Ethnicity and Ideology in the Formation of the Early Islamic Polity”

Felege Yirga, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Remembering Rome and Performing Romanness in the Post-Roman World: The Chronicle of John of Nikiu”

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:45 Section II: Prayer and its Communal Places

Michael Moore, University of Iowa, “Saved from the Gates of Hell: Prayer for the Dead at Cluny”

Mikael Muehlbauer, Columbia University, “Architectural Hybridity at the Lalibela Church Complex”

1:00-2:30          Lunch at the International House

2:30-4:00 Section III: Communal Identity in Region-Specific Contexts

Robert Clines, Western Carolina University, “A City for (Almost) Every Nation: Diversity and Exclusion in Gregory Martin’s Rome”

Matthew Bryan Gillis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Pious Heroes and Monstrous Foes in Carolingian War Poetry”

 

Saturday, March 5

VENUE CHANGE: Student Union Room 377A (Executive Dining Room)

10:00-10:30 Continental Breakfast, Student Union Room 377A

10:30-12:00 Section IV: Heresy, Apostacy, and Conversion

Molly Lester, US Naval Academy, “Heretical Rites & Disordered Customs: Discerning Orthodox Liturgies among Christian Communities in Early Medieval Iberia”

Kristina Richardson, CUNY, “Ottoman Romani in 1410s Germany: Muslim Apostates, Christian Converts”

12:00-1:30 Lunch in Student Union Room 377 A (Executive Dining)

1:30-3:00 Section V: The Varieties of Religious Communities

Michael Gomez, New York University, “Islam as a (Surprisingly) Diverse Community, or Set of Communities, in Medieval West Africa”

Claudia Rapp, University of Vienna, “Experts and Amateurs: Religious Communities across Time and Space in Byzantium”

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-4:30 Religious Communities: A Roundtable

 

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Registration Information:

The 2022 symposium will be held in person at the University of Tennessee. The event is free and open to the public.

Registration information forthcoming.

Please email marco@utk.edu with questions.

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About the annual Marco Symposium

The Marco Symposium is held every year in March or April. The Symposium brings leading experts in their field to the University of Tennessee for two days of talks on that year’s theme. A round-table discussion by all the participants concludes the weekend.

The Symposium is Marco’s signature event of the year, and typically attracts members of the larger Knoxville community in addition to students and faculty at UT and scholars from across the region. The theme of the Symposium changes each year. Faculty who are interested in submitting a proposal should contact marco@utk.edu

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Guest Parking Information:

Visitor parking is located in the Volunteer Hall Garage (1545 White Ave.). Further details about UT visitor parking are available at the Parking & Transit Services website.

Free street parking is available in the neighborhoods around campus (e.g. Fort Sanders), but cannot be guaranteed. Guests can also get to campus via the free trolley from downtown.

The campus map is available online here.

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