Medieval Tents as Locations of Power in the Context of Crusades

press release: UW Institute for Research in the Humanities lecture by Elizabeth Lapina.

The Eastern Mediterranean during the period of crusades was a crucial "contact zone" where Western Christians, Eastern Christians, Muslims, and Jews interacted in a variety of ways, both on and off the battlefield. The talk will explore this "contact zone" from a new and perhaps surprising perspective: through an examination of the Western elites' uses of tents. Made of cloth and hence highly perishable, medieval tents have not survived to this day. Perhaps for this reason, historians tend to underestimate the crucial role that they played in the lives of medieval aristocrats. This role was not merely practical, as protection from the elements, but also symbolic. The talk will address the question of how medieval nobility used tents to proclaim their power, to defend their authority and to undermine the prestige of their rivals and enemies.

Elizabeth Lapina is an associate professor at the History Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her interests revolve around crusades, medieval historical writing, and visual culture. She is the author of a monograph, Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade, and is a co-editor of two volumes, The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources and The Crusades and Visual Culture.

(Refreshments offered in room 211 at 3:00 P.M.)