Encountering the Other on the Silk Road Main Menu Goals, Discoveries, & Analysis Landscape & Background Entrapment "Diseased" Bodies Timeline of Images What's Next? About

Introduction

18
The Silk Road was a collection of major trade routes that spanned various regions across Central and Western Asia, Europe, and a few far-north parts of Africa from approximately the 11th century to the 17th. These commonly traveled paths attracted people from all kinds of identities, backgrounds, and experiences, creating opportunities for not only goods to be traded, but also cultures, stories, traditions, and anything else that could have been shared.

With the Silk Road being at its most active during the medieval ages, humans had very little understanding of what race was and how it affected society. People could clearly see that some had skin of a darker or lighter tone than their own, but that was essentially the extent of their perception of race. People from the Middle Ages did not analyze the repercussions of racial dynamics in the ways that we do nowadays. One connection that was very often made, however, was between race and religion. In most cases, this relationship was simplified down to anyone who was white followed Christianity, and everyone else was considered outsiders. These sorts of generalizations became more and more common, and caused many conflicts associated with religious tensions, eventually making the "outsiders" out to be monstrous, simply because they did not conform to the white Christianity standard.

"'Race' was not a concept active in the medieval vocabulary, although bodily difference,--including the color and tone of skin--certainly played a role in the formation of identity and in monster-making" (Arjana 28).


We were tasked with creating a platform for students that will be in Professor Joanne Diaz’s HUM 102 class that will be taught May Term 2025. These IWU students will explore our site, and then use everything they learn from our research to complete an interactive activity to help them engage with the information on another level. While our targeted audience was this particular class, we did our best to design this project so that anyone interested in the subject can access it.

This page has paths:

  1. Welcome! Abror Akmalov