Entangled Histories: Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era Seminar Series28.11.2025 {en}
ENTANGLED HISTORIES: BORDERS AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
Online Seminar Series
Borders have shaped societies, identities, and histories across centuries. This seminar series, promoted by the Faculty of Communication and the Master’s Programme in Media and Cultural Studies at Üsküdar University, invites academics, students, and anyone interested in understanding how boundaries—political, cultural, social, and symbolic, among others—impact our world. Whether your background is in history, literature, anthropology, philosophy, or simply curiosity, you are invited to join a vibrant and interdisciplinary community.
Through a rich programme of talks and discussions, you will:
- Explore how borders have defined and transformed communities, beliefs, and identities.
- Examine boundaries as both barriers and bridges, fostering encounters, conflicts, and creative exchanges.
- Investigate historical and contemporary examples of negotiation, crossing, and reimagining of borders.
- Engage with scholars presenting original research on migration, exile, religious frontiers, literary representations, and the politics of belonging.
Seminars take place every Wednesday at 5 pm (Central European Time) on Zoom.
Zoom link for all meetings:
https://tinyurl.com/aumv88jz
PROGRAMME (FIRST PART OF THE SERIES)
26 November 2025
Gül Esra Atalay (Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Üsküdar University)
Opening Remarks
Marjan Shokouhi Tajadini Sarvestani (University of Granada)
Bordered Voices: Kavanagh, MacNeice, and the Poetics of Belonging in Ireland
3 December 2025
Ester Cristaldi (Üsküdar University)
Perceiving the Divine from the Margins: Sensory Experience, Linguistic and Theological Boundaries in Byzantine and Islamic Medieval Riddles
10 December 2025
Angela Puca (Leeds Trinity University)
Borders of Healing: Transmission, Secrecy, and Syncretism in Italian Shamanism
17 December 2025
Andrii Kepsha (University of Hradec Králové)
Nature and Boundaries: Water, Space, and the Sensory Experience of the Rus‘-Steppe Frontier (1050s–1100s)
14 January 2026
Rafael Pascual Juan Hernández (University of Granada)
Crossing Epistemological Borders: New Ways of Studying Alliteration in Old English Verse
21 January 2026
Sophie WEI Ling-chu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Typology Meets the Yijing: Jesuit Figurists‘ Intralingual Translation and the Sinification of Jesus
28 January 2026
Jasmine Bria (University of Bari Aldo Moro)
Borderlands and Cultural Identities in Arthurian Narratives
4 February 2026
Naoko Kato (Independent Scholar)
Languages in Exile: The Lost Japanese Archives of War and Return
11 February 2026
Dario Capelli (University of Urbino Carlo Bo)
Echoes of the Struggles Against the Beguines in a Poem by Thomas Hoccleve
18 February 2026
Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin)
Surreal Frontiers: Decolonisation, Borders, and Never-Ending Wars
25 February 2026
Elisa Ramazzina (University of Insubria)
Margins, Maps, and Monsters: Negotiating Borders in the “Wonders of the East”
4 March 2026
Muhammet Enes Akdağ (Üsküdar University)
Transnational Film Networks and Moviegoing Culture in the Jerusalem Mutasarrifate (1874–1917)
11 March 2026
Karen Pinto (University of Colorado Boulder)
Through the Eye of the Cartographer: The KMMS Islamicate Vision of the Bilad al-Rum Byzantine Frontier with Syria
18 March 2026
Sonja Brentjes (Independent Scholar)
Formal and Informal Borders: How Much Did They Matter in the Mathematical Sciences in Premodern Islamicate Societies?
25 March 2026
Eleonora Matarrese (University of Bari)
Edible Wild Plants: Widespread and Futuristic Knowledge in the Middle Ages
1 April 2026
(TBA)
8 April 2026
Marusca Francini (University of Pavia)
Beyond Poetry. The Style of the Norwegian ‚Tristrams Saga‘
Further meetings will be announced soon.
INVITATION TO THE FIRST SEMINAR
First meeting:
Wednesday, 26 November 2025, 5:00 pm (CET)
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/aumv88jz
Title:
Bordered Voices: Kavanagh, MacNeice, and the Poetics of Belonging in Ireland
Marjan Shokouhi Tajadini Sarvestani (University of Granada)
Abstract
Coming from opposite sides of the imaginary and political border that separates Northern Ireland from the Republic, Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh were among the most influential voices in twentieth-century Irish literature to challenge the stereotypical perceptions of Irishness popularised during the Irish Literary Revival. Although seldom considered as contemporaries, both poets engaged with questions of identity and place from fresh perspectives, resisting the notion of Irishness as a homogenous, rural-based identity. Kavanagh’s post-pastoral poetics and MacNeice’s urban sketches of cities such as Dublin and Belfast offer versions of Irishness that remain deeply rooted in place—both rural and urban—while addressing issues of inbetweenness, porous borders, multiplicity of experience, and identity. This essay provides a reading of a selected number of poems by both poets, with a special focus on borders and belonging.
Bionote
Marjan Shokouhi Tajadini Sarvestani is a faculty member in the Department of English and German at the University of Granada. She completed her PhD at the University of Sunderland in 2014 and has since taught at universities in Iran, Spain, and Japan. Her research examines the intersections of literature, culture, and the environment, with a particular focus on Irish writers. Her monograph From Landscapes to Cityscapes: Towards a Poetics of Dwelling in Modern Irish Verse was published by Peter Lang in 2023.
Source: UPDATED PROGRAMME – Entangled Histories: Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era Seminar Series, online, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US.
