The Art of Mediation: : agents, practices and afterimages

 This year’s ICSAH meeting approaches the Art of Mediation as a framework for understanding cross- cultural interaction in history. Throughout time, individuals, institutions, communities, and cultural forms—ranging from language and performance to visual and material culture—have acted as mediators between societies. In negotiating religious difference, political conflict, economic rivalry, and artistic exchange, they shaped the shared spaces where civilisations met, interacted, and coexisted. 

We invite scholars and practitioners to explore the many forms and functions of intercultural mediation in the past and present. From royal marriages and diplomatic missions to multilingual performances and artistic hybridities, we aim to shed light on the human and cultural mechanisms that enabled communication, negotiation, and coexistence across boundaries. We particularly welcome contributions that analyse how contact across languages, belief systems, and political structures was facilitated and made meaningful through a mediating agent - individual, institutional, or material - and how the legacies of such encounters continue to shape our world today. Topics may include, but are not limited to:   

-Diplomacy and politics: the dynamic role of envoys, governors, merchants, legal practitioners, 

or local intermediaries in navigating intercultural conflicts and negotiations. 

-Mobility, migration, and exile: individuals as cultural bridges within diasporas, exile communities, port cities, frontier zones, or trade hubs. 

-Religion and religious practices: the intermediary role of actors, experiences, texts, and 

beliefs in encounters across confessional or doctrinal boundaries. 

-Gender studies: women as mediators in processes of negotiation, reconciliation, or cultural 

translation. 

-Art and cultural production: the role of artistic creation 

in bridging cultures; literary reinterpretations and visual media as mediating forces; the translation and transformation of myths, symbols, and values. 

-Historiography and perception: how mediators have been remembered, forgotten, or re-imagined and how acts of mediation are portrayed in literature, film, philosophy, or media.