11 February 2008, lunchtime workshop with Professor Gerd Althoff
Professor Gerd Althoff from the University of M�nster will visit Aberystwyth on 11 February 2008. He is one of the initiators of the ”New Political History”, that is, an approach that stresses informal networks of power, on the role of symbolism, of ritual and gesture in the conduct of political relations, and that has dominated work on European political culture for most of the last twenty years.
Gerd Althoff will conduct a lunchtime workshop (International politics building, main foyer, 12-2) on Ritual, Symbolism and Society, jointly with Professor David Trotter (European Languages), Dr Jayne Archer (English Literature) and Dr Peter Jackson (International Politics), with Professor Richard Rathbone (History) in the chair, and will deliver a paper to the History & Welsh History Research Seminar (5 PM, C48 Hugh Owen Building) on “Forms and functions of irony in medieval politics”.
The visit is organised under the umbrella of the British Academy Research Network Political Culture in Norman & Angevin England in Comparative Perspective, c. 1066 - c.1300, and is sponsored by the Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies.
Croeso cynnes i bawb - A warm welcome to all
A flavour of Althoff’s approach can be had from his Family, Friends and Followers (Cambridge, 2004), Otto III (State University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) and his articles in Ordering Medieval Society, ed. Bernard Jussen (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).