Keynote by Dr Kate Franklin, Birkbeck, University of London, as part of the conference Ambiguity of Hospitality in the Middle Ages, 1000-1350: Intercultural and Global Aspect. Open for the public.

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Abstract:

The Silk Road is often viewed as a precursor to contemporary globalization, the merchants who traversed it as early agents of cultural exchange. Missing are the lives of the ordinary people who inhabited the route and contributed as much to its development as their itinerant counterparts. In this lecture, Kate Franklin takes the highlands of medieval Armenia as a compelling case study for examining how early globalization and local life intertwined along the Silk Road. In thinking about Silk Road cosmopolitanism as framed within practices of hospitality, she explores the capacities for ‘making worlds for others to live in’ within local traditions, at the same time raising the question of the ambiguity at the heart of such practices of welcoming, housing, and feeding strangers. Ultimately, she frames cosmopolitanism-as-hospitality as a local praxis of globality and agency within the new worlds of the Mongol thirteenth century.