Dr Kate Franklin
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Overview
Overview
Biography
I am an archaeologist of medieval Armenia and the Caucasus and an indiscriminate enthusiast of speculative fiction, cuisine, and vintage textiles. I have been working on collaborative projects in the Republic of Armenia for a decade, exploring the ways that local politics and Silk Road culture were tangled together in landscape and space-time. I was trained as an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, and I am curious about the experiences of medieval travel, intimacies of medieval embodiment, and the profound and mundane practices of medieval and early modern hospitality. I am field co-director of a project that combines thinking about routes and infrastructure, contemplating ‘domestic’ space, and appreciating the canyon landscapes of Vayots Dzor, Armenia. I received an MPhil degree specializing in Cultural Heritage and Museums from Cambridge, and for three years I put that to work on a cultural heritage management project focused on the archaeology of Afghanistan, directing both GIS data-collection strategy and original research into the pasts of Afghanistan and Central Asia. As Doumanian Visiting Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of Chicago I juxtaposed literary histories of travel through Armenia with teaching on the millennia-long archaeological history of the Caucasus. For two years I lectured in Anthropology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, looking at imagined worlds in recipes, table-settings, archaeological assemblages and science-fictions. My work at the moment is concerned with world-making as a locus of politics, with material culture as a mediator of spatio-temporal distances, and with the interpenetration of literary and ‘real’ landscapes in archaeological work.
Highlights
Qualifications
- BA Archaeological Studies, Yale University, 2005
- MPhil Archaeology, University of Cambridge, 2006
- PhD Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2014
- FHEA, 2020
Administrative responsibilities
- BA Director of Studies, HCA
- Director, MA Program in Medieval History
ORCID
0000-0003-4954-0246 -
Research
Research
Research overview
My research interests fluctuate, but a representative list includes:
-Late medieval material culture, architecture, history, and travel accounts, focusing on East-West encounters and the greater Near East
-Cosmopolitanism and the everyday: “world building,” material cosmology/cartography, landscape
-The co-construction of subjects and spaces, the history of naturecultures and feminist approaches to space and landscape
-Materiality, assemblage/assembling, critical posthumanisms
-Food and place-making, cuisine and imagined community
-Heritage politics and ethics, specifically connected to the Silk Road and cultural routes
-The archaeological heritage landscape of Central Asia
-Retrofuturism, nostalgia as political discourse, steampunk and dys/utopian science fiction, and speculative fiction/fabulation as a method and metaphor for writing histories in/of the Anthropocene.I am currently the co-PI of two international collaborative projects on landscapes of the medieval Silk Road world:
The Vayots Dzor Silk Road Survey is rooted in the medieval landscape of Vayots Dzor, Armenia, and investigates the world-makings of local people under Mongol 'world-rule'
The Inner Tian Shan Passages Project investigates the long-term negotiation of contingency and seismic precarity within the mountain passes around Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan
Research Centres and Institutes
- Steering committee member, Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
- Steering committee member , Architecture Space and Society Centre
Research clusters and groups
- Mobility, migration and globality
- Material Cultures
- Mind and Body
- Environment: Urban, Rural, Global
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I am happy and excited to supervise research topics in the material culture and cultural history of the Global Medieval, as well as broader chronological periods in the Near East and Central Asia. I am enthusiastic about interdisciplinary approaches across history, archaeology, literature and anthropological/social theory, on a range of topics: the making and imagining of place; the creation of medieval space-times and life-worlds in craft and matter; travel and encounter; gender, the body and the senses; and the intersections between everyday life and cosmology, politics and cultural representation.
Come talk to me about matter, space and time, about nature, architecture, bodies, mobility and the work of writing history/archaeology.
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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CRAIG HAMBLING
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JACK WATKINS
Teaching
I am the Course Director for the outgoing MA in Medieval History, and on the new Interdisciplinary MA in Medieval Studies. I am committed to centering on the global and interdisciplinary, and to interrogating the Middle Ages as a place in text, landscape, architecture, sense, and memory.
Modules I have convened or taught on:Approaching the Past (BA Level 4 Hub)
The Medieval World: from Constantine to the Khans (BA Level 4)
Space, Architecture and Landscapes of the Middle Ages (BA Level 5)Archaeology of the Everyday (BA Level 5)
Blood and Faith: Violence, Religion and Heresy in Medieval and early modern Europe (BA level 6)
Stories in Stuff: the medieval and early modern world in 20 texts and objects (BA Level 6)
Mastering Historical Research: Birkbeck Approaches (MA)
Imagined Landscapes of the Middle Ages (MA)
The Silk Road: Imagining Global Cultures from the Middle Ages to UNESCO and the BRI (MA)
Teaching modules
- Working in the Middle Ages (AREN275Z7)
- Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (AREN293S7)
- Approaching the Past (HICL200S4)
- Research Skills for Historians (SSHC386Z7)
- Exploring the Past (SSHC407S5)
- The Medieval World: From Constantine to the Khans (SSHC409S4)
- Archaeology of the Everyday (SSHC487S5)
- Imagined Landscapes of the Middle Ages (SSHC488S7)
- Ruins: The Creation of the Past (SSHC566S6)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Franklin, Kate (2023) Archaeology of the Silk Road: what lies ahead?. Ancient Near East Today 11 (11),
- Franklin, Kate (2023) Archaeology of the Silk Road: challenges of scale and storytelling. Journal of Archaeological Research ISSN 1059-0161.
- Franklin, Kathryn (2020) Moving subjects, situated memory: thinking and seeing medieval travel on the Silk Road. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24, pp. 852-876. ISSN 1092-7697.
- Franklin, Kathryn and Boak, E. (2019) The road from above: remotely sensed discovery of early modern travel infrastructure in Afghanistan. Archaeological Research in Asia 18, pp. 40-54. ISSN 2352-2267.
- Babajanyan, A. and Franklin, Kathryn (2018) Everyday life on the medieval Silk road: VDSRS excavations at Arpa, Armenia. Aramazd: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12 (1), pp. 154-182. ISSN 1829-1376.
- Hammer, E. and Seifried, R. and Franklin, Kathryn and Lauricella, A. (2018) Remote assessments of the archaeological heritage situation in Afghanistan. Journal of Cultural Heritage 33, pp. 125-144. ISSN 1296-2074.
- Franklin, Kathryn and Hammer, E. (2018) Untangling palimpsest landscapes using remotely sensed techniques in Spin Boldak, Afghanistan. Journal of Field Archaeology 43 (1), pp. 58-73. ISSN 0093-4690.
- Franklin, Kathryn and Babajanyan, A. (2018) The power of making places: collaborative heritage and working with ARISC in Armenia. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 6 (3), pp. 205-216. ISSN 2166-3548.
- Franklin, Kathryn and Vorderstrasse, T. and Babayan, F. (2017) Examining the late medieval village from the case at Ambroyi, Armenia. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 76 (1), pp. 113-138. ISSN 0022-2968.
Book
- Bintley, Mike and Franklin, Kate (2023) Landscapes and environments of the Middle Ages. Seminar Studies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780367640729. (In Press)
- Franklin, Kate (2021) Everyday Cosmopolitanism: living the Silk Road in Medieval Armenia. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520380929.
- Miller Bonney, E. and Franklin, Kathryn and Johnson, J.A., eds. (2016) Incomplete archaeologies: assembling knowledge in the past and present. Oxbow Books. ISBN 9781785701153.
Book Review
- Franklin, Kate (2024) Tyers, Theresa L. and Patricia Skinner, eds. Gender and the 'Natural' Environment in the Middle Ages. Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages Series. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023. 272 pages, £70 for hardback and epub. ISBN 978-1-83772-057-6..
- Franklin, Kate and Honarchian, A. (2021) 'Women, Too, Were Blessed: The Portrayal of Women in Early Christian Texts', David Zakarian. Brill Armenian Texts and Studies Series, Vol. 4. 2021.
Book Section
- Franklin, Kate (2023) From marvels to motels: imagined and infrastructural worlds of silk road travel. In: Barron, C.M. and Carlin, M. (eds.) Medieval Travel: Essays from the 2021 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies. Shaun Tyas. pp. 109-124. ISBN 9781915774064. (In Press)
- Franklin, Kate and Boak, E. (2021) Early modern caravan networks in Afghanistan: a view from above. In: Clarkson, P. and Santoro, C. (eds.) Caravans in Global Perspective: Contexts and Boundaries. Routledge. ISBN 9780367773007. (In Press)
- Babajanyan, A. and Franklin, Kate (2021) Local canyons, global views: results of the Vayots Dzor Silk Road Survey Project based on the 2015 – 2019 seasons. In: Avetisyan, P. and Bobokhyan, A. (eds.) Archaeology of Armenia in Regional Context. Proceedings of the International Conference dedicated to the 60th Anniversary of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. Yerevan, Armenia: National Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. pp. 397-412. ISBN 9789939886046.
- Babayanjan, A. and Franklin, Kate (2021) Medieval Arpa at the intersection of caravan trade routes. In: Dalalyan, T. (ed.) Vayots Dzor: Historical and Cultural Heritage Studies. Yerevan: IAE Publications. pp. 231-249. ISBN 9789939886145.
- Babajanyan, A. and Franklin, Kathryn (2019) Medieval cultural landscape in Vayots Dzor within the context of the Silk Road. In: PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY HAIA-3. Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography Yerevan. pp. 125-136. ISBN 9789939917894.
- Franklin, Kathryn (2019) Making worlds at the edge of everywhere: politics of place in medieval Armenia. In: Eger, A. (ed.) The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers: From the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 9781607328780.
- Franklin, Kathryn and Babajanyan, A. (2018) Approaching landscapes of infrastructure: methods and results of the Vayoc Dzor Silk Road Survey. In: Anderson, W. and Hopper, K. and Robinson, A. (eds.) Finding Common Ground in Diverse Environments: Survey Archaeology in the South Caucasus. OREA. Vienna, Austria: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. pp. 131-144. ISBN 9783700182047.
- Franklin, Kathryn (2016) Assembling subjects: Cosmopolitanism in late medieval Armenia. In: Franklin, Kathryn and Miller-Bonney, E. and Johnson, J. (eds.) Incomplete Archaeologies: Assembling Knowledge in the Past and Present. Oxbow Books. pp. 131-148. ISBN 9781785701153.