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HCA Tasters: Everyday cosmopolitanisms and worlding the medieval Silk Road

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Everyday cosmopolitanisms and worlding the medieval Silk Road

Dr Kate Franklin and Dr Lesley McFadyen

The "Silk Road' is a popular term meaning many things: routes of ancient travel linking east and west, cultural connectivity expressed in shared music, art, dance, and food across Eurasia, a metaphor for free trade (whether of exotic goods from far off lands, or of illegal stuff on the internet), or a vision of mobility, infrastructural connectivity and mutual benefit invoked by modern political projects like China’s Belt and Road Initiative. All of these visions evoke movement, encounter, and exchange at global scales. But what does such a global culture feel like at the scale of the personal, of the intimate? Dr Kate Franklin and Dr Lesley McFadyen will discuss in depth the core feminist and archaeological questions of Kate's forthcoming book Everyday Cosmopolitanisms: Living the Silk Road in Medieval Armenia: what did it mean to live the global in the everyday of the middle ages? And, how did the routine care and maintenance of everyday life 'make room' for the medieval silk road--for encounter, for exchange, for cosmopolitanism?

Booking is essential so that we may send you the joining link. 

Listen to Dr Kate Franklin talk about the medieval silk road in this short video to get a flavour of what to expect from the taster session:

Kate Franklin presentation (9 mins)

 

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HCA TASTER SERIES

This event is part of a series of six 90-minute on-line taster events exploring histories of London, of migration, of sex and sexuality and much else besides, designed to give a flavour of studying at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in our department.

You can join one session or the whole series; we have scheduled two evening, two Saturday and two weekday afternoon sessions so hope there will be a time and date to suit everyone. Video introductions to the topic will be available ahead of most sessions and each one will conclude with a short question and answer session about the department and opportunities for studying with us.

All are welcome – from offer holders and those thinking of applying to those simply interested in the topics.  

Taster 1: Wed 27 January 7:00 - 8:30pm Migrants in London from the Tudors to the Twentieth Century

Taster 2: Sat 27 February 2:00 - 3:30pm Sex and sexualities in Britain, 1861–2021 

Taster 3: Wed 31 March 2:00 - 3:30pm Religious radicalism past and present: from the European reformation to the Amish in America

Taster 4: Wed 28 April 7:00 - 8.30pm Migration and Citizenship in the Mediterranean: From Ancient Times to the Present

Taster 5: Wed 26 May 2:00 - 3:30pm Everyday cosmopolitanisms and worlding the medieval Silk Road

Taster 6: Sat 26 June 2:00 - 3:30pm, London: the world in a city

 

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This taster series is part of the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology's Discover the Past events series, open to the public and students. To see the full list of events, visit the Discover the Past web page.

The Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck has a distinguished tradition as an international centre of excellence. We are the only university department in London to include archaeologists, classicists and historians investigating every period from prehistory to the early twenty-first century. Join us to discover the past and engage with the present across continents and cultures.

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