Migrants shaping Europe, past and present: A roundtable

Critics of early Arabic, French, Italian, and Spanish literatures, and a historian of religions engage with questions raised by the collection, Migrants shaping Europe, past and present: Multilingual literatures, arts, and cultures (Manchester University Press, 2022). Their conversation begins with ideas of early migrants. They debate the value of comparing cultures along the Channel with Mediterranean ones, the risks of using modern terminology, the juxtaposition of early cases with modern or contemporary ones. They go on to consider groups of ‘migrants’ in relation to individuals: Moriscos or Spanish Muslims, rural workers represented by Alain Chartier, or individual poets such as Ibn Hamdīs. At the heart of this discussion: the stakes of composing a cultural history of migration that gives place to a full range of peoples dispossessed and displaced during premodern periods. The four scholars evoke the challenges of thinking in terms of ‘our global selves,’ of developing original vocabularies, of investigating the creative consequences of their migration, of taking account of the multilingual, artistic expressions and representations of such peoples on the move.

Duke Scholars

Author Helen Solterer Romance Studies