The Iconography of ‘Otherness’ in Pre-Modern Visual Art

The concept of ‘otherness’ or ‘othering’ has been a prominent topic in sociology and anthropolo-gy in the last decades. It has also recently been examined in historical disciplines, particularly with regard to pre-modern times, and taken from philological, historical, and visual studies perspec-tives. In the past, however, most of these studies on ‘otherness’ and similar phenomena, such as (social) inequality, dependency, and inclusion/exclusion, focused on specific regions, cultures, and periods. In contrast, the methodological approach used in this volume, is based on transcul-tural and diachronic comparisons. This allows us to look at a broad range of images of ‘others’ stemming from different pre-modern societies (prior to 1800 CE) around the globe and to com-pare the role of ‘otherness’ and the use of ‘othering’ as a pictorial strategy in various historical contexts. The volume includes case studies from Bronze and Iron Age Near East and Egypt, Late Bronze Age and Archaic-Classical Greece, pre-Roman Italy, Medieval and Early Modern Europe as well as pre-modern South Asia.