Geography's medieval history: A neglected enterprise?

This paper examines the marginal place of ‘medieval geography’ in contemporary geographical scholarship. Over the past two decades, geographers' studies of the subject’s historiography have tended to focus mainly on ‘modern’ and ‘early-modern’ rather than medieval geographies. This contrasts with the early 20th century when ‘medieval geography’ was seen by geographers to be part of the discipline’s long history. Set within the context of current discussion on writing geography’s histories, the paper examines how geographers, and latterly historians, have sought to characterize and represent medieval geographies. This reveals that the subject of geography in the Middle Ages shared in the same fluidities and ambivalences that characterize geography today. The paper thus helps to challenge orthodox views of geography’s history, and argues that the connections and continuities that have shaped geography for over two millennia cautions us against taking a compartmentalized approach to historiographies of geography.

The Representation of the Female Body in the Multimedia Works of Regina José Galindo

The female body is central to the performance art, poetry and blog site interventions of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo. While Galindo is best known for her performance work, this article compares the hereto overlooked, distinctive and often shocking representations of the female body across her multimedia outputs. We first consider the ways in which, in all three media, Galindo presents an ‘excessive’, carnivalised, grotesque and abject female body. Second, we analyse representations of the female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level. In so doing, we show how Galindo not only contests hegemonic visions of gender and (national) identity but also challenges the viewer/reader to engage with, rather than look away from, the violence to which women are subjected in patriarchal society.