Conference programme: ‘From Name to Space, and to Myth’, 17 November 2023

From Name to Space, and to Myth: Toponyms, Topographies, Representations, and How Places Become Mythical in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean Space and Beyond (7th–14th centuries)

This conference aims to ask a simple yet complex question: how can a (holy) place becomes mythical through the intersection of its name (echoed by pilgrims, travelers, “policymakers”, texts, and accounts), its topographical features, and its visual representations? Necessarily at the intersection of scholarly traditions and disciplines, this study day wishes to understand this phenomenon by crossing perspectives from scholars studying “Eastern” and “Western” – as far as these categories are relevant – case studies, from the legendary Mount Ararat, resting place of Noah’s Ark, to a series of places which are profoundly embedded in premodern collective memory. The mythicization of space is, of course, not only the result of these factors playing together: this workshop also wishes to investigate the purposeful fabrication of place by policymakers, from ruling powers to ecclesiastical authorities.

In person: University of Lausanne (Switzerland)

Online: https://unil.zoom.us/j/95408794847

Programme

9h30: Opening remarks (Cassandre Lejosne, University of Lausanne)

10h00: Adrien Palladino (Masaryk University, Brno)

Relictual Relics: Reflections on Nature, Placedness, and Ecologies of Holy Sites in Late Antiquity (4th–8th c.)

10h30 Coffee break

11h00: Mattia Guidetti (University of Bologna)

From Mount Moriah to al-Haram al-Sharif: Jerusalem in the Early Islamic Period

11h30: Chen Cui (University of Lausanne; Birkbeck, University of London)

Spatial Narrative and the Mandeville-Author’s Vision of World System: Reading Mandeville’s Travels as a Universal History

12h00 Lunch break

14h00: Nazénie Garibian (Institute of Ancient Manuscripts of Matenadaran; Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, Yerevan)

From Name to Space and to a Sacred Topography: The Mount Ararat in the Armenian Christian Tradition

14h30 : Annalisa Moraschi (Masaryk University, Brno; École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris)

The Epitome of Perfection: How a 13th-century Liege Family Came to Build the “Perfect Establishment”

15h00: Coffee break

15h30: Giorgos Papantoniou (Trinity College Dublin)

Reconsidering the Cypriot ‘extra-urban’ sanctuary in the context of Central Place Theory: Methodological Attempts from Earlier Periods

16h00: Final discussion