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Birkbeck Medieval Seminar - Landscape and belief

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Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

No booking required

Taking inspiration from the philosophy of phenomenology, scholars of medieval history, literature and archaeology have begun exploring the intimate connections between human society and landscape.

Phenomenologists have envisaged existence as a constant process of being-in-the-world, whereby human relationships are forged through socially and culturally constructed landscapes. From this perspective, to understand a society we must also understand the social and cultural meanings it attached to landscape and the way these meanings changed over time. Because the social and cultural meanings of past landscapes leave traces in both textual and material culture, this is necessarily an inter-disciplinary exercise in which a range of different but complementary methodologies can be applied.

The Birkbeck Medieval Seminar 2013 will focus on the connections between landscape and belief as well as the methodologies for analyzing those connections. It will do so through presentations from four outstanding scholars working in different disciplines.

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