Imagining Iberia in Medieval German Literature (Transcript)

A porous boundary zone between Europe and Africa, a space at once liminal and peripheral, both a gateway and a border defined through cultural and religious alterity - medieval Iberia challenges post-medieval notions of East, West, nationhood and Europe. Examining the ideological implications of real and fictional travels to the Peninsula in German-language texts ranging from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, Doriane Zerka considers the construction of individual and collective identities, religious, cultural and political. Combining the work of Michel Foucault, postcolonialism and network theory, she sheds light on the ideological processes contributing to the construction of any cultural entity modern audiences might call 'Spanish', 'German' or 'European'.

Doriane Zerka is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge. Imagining Iberia is her first book, and has been awarded the 2020 Women in German Studies Book Prize and the 2020 Preis der Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Germanistik für jüngere Forscherinnen und Forscher.