Session proposal for the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies Saint Louis University (St. Louis, MO) June 20-22, 2022 Frontiers, borderlands, contact zones – medieval Ireland is often conceived in terms of the countless borders by which it was demarcated. Some of those borders were physical, from the geographic boundaries that mirrored both the natural and political landscapes to the military frontiers along which the limits of royal authority were contested. Others reflected ideological boundaries, like the ethnic categories that functioned as mechanisms of legal difference. When represented on the map (and sometimes in scholarship), these boundaries appear rigid and impervious. Yet textual evidence, material culture, and the landscape itself…