Abstract:
Cross-cultural interactions in the Baltic Sea Region, at the crossroads between East and West, have seldom been conceptualised as meetings between equals. Stereotypes of ethnic inferiority have been a regular feature of political and discursive processes in this region. In February 2008, an interdisciplinary panel of scholars met in Florence to interpret cross-cultural interactions and structures of power in the Baltic Sea Region from the Middle Ages to the present and to critically re-examine how such encounters are reflected in politics, historiography, cartography, literature and the mass media. The proceedings of the international symposium are documented in this volume.