Except for the studies by Peter Clark (1983) and Hans Conrad Peyer (1983; 1987), inns were mostly excluded from historical research in the last third of the 20th century (cf. Heiss, 2011: 14). Given this categorical ’disqualification’, the revival of interest in inns and taverns at the beginning of the new millennium is indeed surprising (see Kümin, 2009, for an overview). This reorientation can be primarily attributed to the spatial turn, which elevates space and spatial orders to categories of analysis (cf. Bachmann-Medick, 2006; Günzel, 2017). Another factor contributing to the renewed interest in inns and thus hospitality is the erosion of the rigidly hierarchical dichotomies between supposedly legitimate and illegitimate fields of research. This distinction is rooted primarily in the differentiation between high art/literature and popular culture.
Yet, this newly awakened interest in places/spaces of hospitality has hardly transmitted into cultural research. Consequently, analyses on representations of taverns in different medias largely remain a blind spot. This even applies to art and image studies: early modern genre paintings, for example, are depicted as places of sin and vice in accordance with Baroque visual rhetorics or, in modern times, as spaces for newly emerging leisure activities. Subsequently, the focus remains iconographic and there is hardly any consideration of the inn’s role as a threshold and meeting point for diverse social groups. The aim of this conference is to help bridge this gap.
Inns can be understood as spaces dedicated to professional hospitality. This refers to the “cultural pattern” (Wierlacher, 2011: 1) of receiving, entertaining, and accommodating paying guests. Those who happen to stop at guesthouses include merchants, pilgrims, jugglers, vagrants and vagabonds, as well as tourists; each of whom can be addressed as homo viator (cf. Harms, 1970). In addition to travellers, we also focus our attention on locals visiting inns after work or for special celebrations. The encounters between these topical characters can be used to explore the relationships between centre and periphery, ‘the other and the self’, ‘inside and outside’, ‘proximity and distance’, and ‘intimacy and public life’ (Friedrich/Paar, 2009: 8). Our basic assumption is that analysing representations of the relationships between visitors and hosts in different media will provide insights into how (gendered) bodies and social norms are reproduced or inverted, as well as the strategies and rhetoric used for this purpose.
We welcome contributions from the fields of media, social, and cultural studies that analyse changes in representational strategies of professional hospitality between antiquity and the contemporary. Against the background outlined below, research may address different approaches and traditions as regards to hospitality, the connection between spatial arrangements and social structures, and last but not least the negotiation and subversion of norms.
In addition to focusing on hosts and guests, the conference encourages participants to examine the specific activities taking place in lodging houses. In this respect, Heiss’ assessment that inns are ‘contact points’ (2001: 14), where people of different social classes and genders meet (cf. Rau/Schwerhoff, 2004: 48), is especially relevant. Consequently, inns and guesthouses can be understood as spaces of conviviality where hospitality is complemented by a culture of play and negotiation (cf. Rau, 2005: 403). However, this can also attract fraudsters. In this respect, it makes sense to also question the staging of criminal acts between members of different classes and social milieus.
Against the backdrop of Habermas’ study on the transformation of the public sphere (1962), historians such as Rau and Schwerhoff (2004) have argued that inns are venues in which the public sphere is constituted and constructed: it is in these spaces that ‘opinion-forming processes are advanced, conflicts are resolved, and decisions are made’ (ibid.: 48). This development continues into modern society, which is functionally differentiated: according to Beneder (1997: 80f.), for instance, inns become gendered political spaces that offer male workers a ‘counter-public sphere’ (ibid.: 152) in their struggle for political participation. Reacting to this, state authorities, fearing subversive forces, aim to control taverns and inns (cf. Trustly, 2004: 66; Kümin, 2005: 134f.). In this context, attention should also focus on the representation of intermediate spaces within guesthouses, such as back rooms and their assumed access restrictions.

Building on these preliminaries, the conference invites participants to address the following questions concerning inns, guest- and lodging houses, and taverns:
1. How have depictions of these venues changed since antiquity? What role do cultural specifics play, for example in Northern European, transalpine or non-European depictions? How has the meaning and presentation of hospitality spaces transformed over time?
2. Which narratives and motifs have been adopted from mythologies, religions, and literature? How can these appropriations be interpreted? Which cross-media references can be identified?
3. What literary and artistic devices and iconographies are used to showcase inns? What cultural codes underlie their representation? In what ways are genre principles reinforced and/or subverted (e. g. those constituting genre painting, the [picaresque] novel, and drama)?
4. What connections can be identified between depictions of inns and social norms? Do literary and artistic depictions of guesthouses offer alternatives to established social orders? Or do they rather validate or reinstate them?
5. How do relationships between guests and hosts evolve within the confines of the inn? How is successful hospitality created, and how can it be subverted? What if guests act as parasites? (a parasite is literally someone who sits at the table; see Serres 1985, Derrida 1990, and Simon, 2016.) Do parasitic guests reverse the code of hospitality, which requires monetary compensation in return for food and lodging? Or do they confirm it by embodying a negative deviation from the norm which should be avoided?
6. What role do categories such as class, race, gender and ability play in representations of inns? Which social indicators can be identified by analysing the guest’s clothing, activities, age groups, posture, hygiene, eating habits, and so on? How do populism and miserabilism occur regarding the portrayal of people from different social classes (cf. Grignon/Passeron, 1989)? Who is the target audience for paintings depicting inns, for films or for novels narrating scenes set in a guesthouse, for example? Who meets in back rooms, and what is their business?
7. Against the backdrop of the aforementioned categories, how are individuals or groups included or excluded? What significance can be assigned to dichotomies, such as the distinction between the self and the other? In what ways is the different status of pilgrims expressed?

The conference is aimed at early career as well as established scholars of art history, media, social, and literary studies (German, English and Romance studies). We welcome contributions of 30 minutes (plus 15 minutes for discussion) addressing these or equivalent questions from different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.

Please send your abstracts in German and English (max. 1500 characters), along with a short biography, to lars.henk@rptu.de and e.kepetzis@rptu.de by October 17, 2025.

The conference will take place from October 13 to 15, 2026, at the Butenschoen House in Landau, Pfalz.

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