Location: Conference Room, Domstraße 11 (University Main Building), 17489 Greifswald
Registration and link for streaming: tba
Thursday, 02 February
09:00-09:30 Introduction and Welcome
Prof. Dr Cordelia Heß (Greifswald)
09:30-10:30 Indigenous methods
Dr Timothy Bourns (London): "Can we access a counter-narrative to the Vínland sagas through Kaladlit okalluktualliait?"
Dr Keith Ruiter (Suffolk): "What do Windigos Have to Do with Vikings?: Seeing Early Scandinavian Legalism with Two Eyes".
11:00-12:00 Colonial medievalisms I
Hannah Armstrong (York): "Beyond 'Lost' White Communities: Kalaallit Nunaat, Norse medievalisms, and the Indigenous Turn"
Jay Lalonde (New Brunswick): "'... there is a strong leaven of the old Norse blood in nearly all of us'; Settler Colonialism and the Vínland Mythology"
12:00-13:00 Colonial medievalisms II
Dr Gwendolyne Knight (Stockholm): "Magical Stereotypes and Lived Realities in Medieval Sápmi"
Dr Christina Lentz (Tromsø): "Colonialism 2.0? Perspectives on medieval history in Norwegian textbooks"
14:30-15:30 Crusades
Dr Thomas Morcom (Oslo): "Raider, Crusader, Far-Traveller? The Complexity of Old Norse Depictions of the Expedition of Sigurðr jórsalafari"
Dr Sabine Walther (Bonn): "The Baltic crusades in an Icelandic mirror? The case of Yngvar the Far-Travelled"
16:00-17:30 Keynote
Dr Laura Gazzoli (Vienna): "From the beginning? Colonial entanglements in the far north and the Baltic and the formation of Scandinavian identities, c. 800-c. 1100"
Friday, 03 February
10:00-11:00 Spatial dimensions of colonialism
Basil Arnould Price (York): "The King and His Skattland: A Postcolonial Approach to Post-Commonwealth Iceland"
Prof. Thomas Wallerström (Trondheim): "The Gulf of Bothnia, 1300-1621, as a 'third space'"
11:00-12:00 Colonial semantics
Carina Damm (Leipzig): "Sámi and Bjarmar as Brokers in the Medieval Fur Trade"
Prof. Alexandra Petrulevich (Uppsala): "The East Norse Echo: Swedish Medieval and Post-medieval Discourse on finnar, kareler and lappar"
13:30-14:30 Religion
Dr Christian Koch Madsen (Nuuk): "Far from Rome - Religious Beliefs and Otherness of the Medieval Greenland Norse"
Dr Solveig Marie Wang (Greifswald): "Christianity, Conversion and the Saami in the Medieval Period"
14:30-15:30 Panel discussion and conclusion
Organisers: Prof. Dr Cordelia Heß, Prof. Dr Clemens Räthel, Dr Solveig Marie Wang, Erik Wolf. For any enquiries please contact: wangsuni-greifswaldde.
Monday, 12th September 2022
12.00 pm - 12.30 pm
Registration/Get together
12.30 pm - 1.00 pm
Opening/Welcome
1.00 pm - 1.45 pm
Cornelia Linde (Greifswald): "Oriental Languages at the University of Greifswald (c. 1570-1650)"
1.45 pm - 2.30 pm
Paul Babinski (Copenhagen): "Haqq-vīrdī - A Learned Persian Traveller in Schleswig"
3.00 pm - 3.45 pm
Asaph Ben-Tov (Copenhagen): "Lutheran Orthodoxy and Oriental Studies in Kiel: the Case of Matthias Wasmuth (1625-1688)"
3.45 pm - 4.30 pm
Benjamin Wallura (Berlin): "The Horns of Moses. An Orientalist's Debate around the Baltics"
6.00 pm - 7.00 pm
Jan Loop (Copenhagen): "Arabic and Islamic Studies in Early Modern Denmark and Beyond"
Public evening lecture at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Institute of Advanced Studies (Institute of Advanced Studies)
(Martin-Luther-Str. 14)
Tuesday, 13th September 2022
9.00 am - 9.45 am
Matthew Norris (Lund): "Semitic Sweden: Oriental Archetypes in Johannes Bureus' Study of Runic Writing"
9.45 am - 10.30 am
Bernd Roling (Berlin): "From Niels Kiöping to Carl Fredrik Bergstedt: The Prehistory of Swedish Indology"
11.00 am - 11.45 am
Níels Páll Eggerz (Frankfurt/Main): "The Talmud, the Zohar, and the New Testament in the Thought of Johan Kemper of
Uppsala"
11.45 am - 12.30 pm
Toon Van Hal (Leuven): "Oriental Language Study and Language Classification in late 18th-Century Sweden"
2.00 pm - 2.45 pm
Kurt Villads Jensen (Stockholm): "Saracens in the Baltic. Scattered Evidences of Strong Images of Religious Enemies"
2.45 pm - 3.30 pm
Anu Põldsam (Tartu) and Janika Päll (Tartu): "Teaching and Writing in Hebrew in Estonia, Latvia and Curonia - Contexts and Texts"
4.00 pm - 4.45 pm
Meelis Friedenthal (Tartu): "Histories of Philosophy and 'Oriental Philosophy' in the Early Modern University of Tartu"
4.45 pm - 5.30 pm
Liudas Jovaiša (Vilnius) and Egdūnas Račius (Kaunas): "Acquaintance with the Orient in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania"
Wednesday, 14th September 2022
9.00 am - 9.45 am
Indravati Félicité (La Réunion): "Oriental Culture and Scholarship in the Early Modern Baltic Sea Regions of the Holy Roman Empire: a Diplomatic Perspective"
9.45 am - 10.30 am
Isabelle Dolezalek (Greifswald): "Material Culture in Baltic Orientalism"
11.00 am - 11.45 am
Patricia Berg (Helsinki): "Wallin's Journeys to the Arabian Peninsula and Oriental studies in the Baltics"
11.45 am - 12.30 pm
Carsten Jahnke (Copenhagen): "The Orient in the Stomach of Northern Europeans: Trade and Cultural Connections between the Orient and Northern Europe in the High and Late Middle Ages"
12.30 am - 1.30 pm
Final Discussion and Conclusions
This workshop seeks to reconstruct the history and significance of 'oriental' studies in the Baltic Sea region from the Middle Ages to c. 1800. The event will provide a platform for papers from different disciplinary backgrounds with a focus on the scholarly and cultural development in specific geographical regions and at selected institutions. Additionally, contributions will discuss the transfer and exchange of knowledge, scholarly practices, and material as well as textual sources through networks across different cultural spaces in this area.
Conference programme (pdf)
Organisers:
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Linde (Greifswald)
Prof. Jan Loop (Copenhagen)
Prof. Dr. Bernd Roling (Berlin)
The research cluster "New Nationalisms using the Example of Minority Politics" belonging to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research (IFZO) at the University of Greifswald and the University of Stockholm are organising a joint workshop in Stockholm from 03 February 2020 - 04 February 2020.
The workshop will serve as a forum for academics from German and Swedish universities to discuss new approaches and research results on the topic of "New Nationalisms in the Baltic Sea Regions - Master's Narratives and Counter Narratives in New Nationalism" and to deepen their cooperation in this area.
The "New Nationalisms" research cluster investigates the formation and establishment of minorities in the Baltic Sea region and their relationship to nations from a historical perspective. Former spokesperson was the Chair of Nordic History at the University of Greifswald, Prof. Dr. Cordelia Heß.
The Chair of Nordic History at the University of Greifswald organised a conference on the topic of religious minorities in the North from 5 - 7 April 2020. The occasion marked the publication of the volume "Antisemitism in the North - History and State of Research", which was published by DeGruyter. At the conference, academics from Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden presented their work on this topic and discussed the direction of this comparatively young field of research. The presentations ranged from the witch trials of the 17th century to Islamophobia in the 21st century.
The volume "Antisemitism in the North - History and State of Research" has been published as an e-book by DeGruyter and is available as open-access here: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/510552
International symposium in conjunction with the Working Group on Prussian History and the Historical Commission for Pomerania under the academic coordination of Professor Dr. Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann (Greifswald)
The end of the greatest war to date raised great hopes in humankind for a future of equality, democracy and peace. In Germany, too, much was achieved that we now take for granted as elements of our social and government systems. Nevertheless, the 1918/19 revolution has not yet found a place in the patriotic calendar of German celebrations. The conference on the centenary aims to help change this. For the purpose of the conference, new research results on the course of the revolution in Pomerania and East Prussia will be presented before the focus is broadened to include the upheavals throughout Germany. A new political culture, a new labour and social law and hopeful approaches to public health emerged.
Academic Director: Professor Dr Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann (Greifswald)
Information:
Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald
17487 Greifswald
The International Research Training Group (IRTG) "Baltic Borderlands: Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region", a collaborative programme between the universities of Lund, Tartu, and Greifswald, will discuss the context and medialisation of border crossing (or transgression) and the formation (or dissolution) of borderlands. The panels will feature papers from the humanities and social sciences, e. g. history and art history, linguistics and literary studies, political sciences, gender studies, sociology, and digital humanities that address maps, literary texts, academic accounts, biographical records, press media, film, digital productions and their narratives, as well as the impact on conceptualisations of borders and borderlands.
Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett reflect in their 2011 account "On Borderlands" on the expansion of research approaches and the applicability of the fashionable (academic) concept of borderlands within the humanities. Although the concept had been applied with varying degrees of success, the power of borderlands as an analytical tool appears already in Gloria Anzaldúa's summary of her own stories of living in the borderlands, which she defines as spaces where two or more cultures coexist.. Similarly, the observation of Etienne Balibar that "borders are everywhere" rely very much on narrativisations of experiences through different channels. These channels are particularly interesting in the context of this conference and include poetry, maps, biographical accounts and, more recently, numerous digital approaches.
Globalisation supported a perspective of borderlessness beyond any containments like national, imperial or regional spaces and opened up these centrist research perspectives on spaces and orders. Spatial mobility here implies to cross borders, but does not mean to cross them out. They continue to be part of our cognitive and physical world. They remain part of our social, cultural, political and economic world making processes not only through experiences at and across the border but particularly through debates, discourses and images embedded in a multitude of narratives. We therefore ask: What happens with borders and borderlands in the narratives about times of historical and contemporary globalisation? Do we cross or transgress borders? What does it mean when we use one or the other concept? Who has particular interest to present borders and borderlands in a specific way? Which media were used to disseminate ideas? Which of these choices confirm and which subvert the border? Do media and communication have an impact on these processes and hereby influence perceptions, constructions and dissolution of borders and borderlands?
Our keynote speakers will be Vlad Strukov (Leeds) and Kazimierz Musiał (Gdańsk).
Thursday, 28 June 2018
9.00 Keynote - Vlad Strukov: Future Borders: Media and Mediations in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
10.15 Panel I Border Challenges
13.00 Panel II Border Crossings
15.00 Panel III Border Exhibitions
Friday, 29 June 2018
9.00 Keynote - Kazimierz Musiał (Gdańsk)
10.15 Panel IV Mediating Borders
12.30 Panel V Depicting Borders
14.00 Final Remarks - Peter Borschberg (Singapore)
Conference venue: Conference Room, University Main Building, Domstraße 11, Greifswald
Reception at the Pomeranian State Museum, Rakower Str. 9, Greifswald
15.00 Baltic Borderlands - Nine Years of PhD-Research in and about the Baltic Sea Region
- Career Talks
Compared to other states, particularly the United States, Germany and Israel, anti-Semitism research in Scandinavia is relatively marginalised to an institutional personal level. This applies in particular to research beyond the period of fascism, the Second World War and the Holocaust. In addition, the historical development of anti-Jewish stereotypes remains relatively under-researched in comparison to other prejudices and minority groups in Scandinavia; likewise, Jewish History as a whole is poorly represented at universities.
This conference is not primarily concerned with gathering knowledge about anti-Semitism in Scandinavia, its outbreaks and forms, historical dimensions or how it can be combated. Instead, it is about finding out which research strategies and political demands exist or will be necessary in the future with regard to anti-Semitism research. It is therefore about taking stock of the framework conditions and the future prospects of the field of research in the near future, both in terms of content and institutional support.
These questions will be discussed by renowned researchers from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In addition, young researchers will present their research projects on the topic.
The conference is a cooperation between the Chair of Nordic History, the Department of History at the University of Gothenburg and the Forum of Jewish Studies at Uppsala University. It is funded by the Swedish Vetenskapsrådet. Members of the general public are welcome, registration is not required.
Venues
Department of History, Room 3.09, Domstraße 9 A
Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute of Advanced Studies), Martin-Luther-Straße 14
Contact at the University of Greifswald
Prof. Dr. Cordelia Heß
Department of History
Domstraße 9 A
17489 Greifswald
Tel.: +49 3834 420 3330
cordelia.hess(at)uni-greifswald(dot)de