The Goths Compared: 'East-Germanic' Communities between the Baltics, the Black Sea and the West

In early November, the Centre for Medieval Studies hosted the international conference 'The Goths Compared: "East-Germanic" Communities between the Baltics, the Black Sea and the West'

On 5-6 November 2019, the Centre for Medieval Studies hosted the international conference 'The Goths Compared: "East-Germanic" Communities between the Baltics, the Black Sea and the West'. The conference was inspired by the discoveries of new monuments of Gothic writing: the Bologna fragment and Gothic graffiti from the Crimean peninsula. It brought together the leading scholars of Gothic traditions from Europe and Russia, working on both linguistic and historical themes: Carla Falloumini, Arend Quak, Andrey Vinogradov and many others.

The conference discussed a new project of the systematic edition of Gothic texts led by scholars at Perugia and Vienna. It then tackled a series of historical-linguistic and social-historical themes: the terminology of Christian texts in Gothic, collective identifications (both religious and 'ethnic') reflected in Gothic materials, Gothic hagiography, kinship concepts and structures in Gothic societies, the historiography of Gothic studies.