MedRoute Workshop

FINAL ONLINE WORKSHOP

With this final online workshop that will be held on the 7^th and ^8th of October 2020, the EU Marie Curie MedRoute project – Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 747030 – MedRoute (http://medroute.eu/) – is willing to create a space of discussion on the main themes that are its core. The MedRoute project – running from September 2017 to August 2020 – has reached its end, and we wish this workshop will represent a new start!

The final online workshop will discuss diasporas, travels accounts, methodology, and the interplay in between migration and the political power.

In order to access the four panels as auditors, those who are interested should write to Antonino Campagna (antonino.campagna@uniroma1.it) specifying the panels they are interested in (please note the keynote speech by Bernard Heyberger is included in the registration to the first panel). The time zone of the program is Rome time zone (GMT+2). Registrations are open until the 4th of October.

For the panels, check our program:

The Visibility of Strangers. Diasporas, Urban Spaces, and Material Pluralism in the Mediterranean

Final Marie Curie Online Workshop, 7^th & 8^th October 2020.

7^th October, 10:30Welcoming & Opening Keynote: Bernard Heyberger (EHESS-Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) – Diversity, pluralism and mobility in the Eastern Mediterranean

12:30, Panel 1 – The Foreigner Focus: Material practices and identity negotiation in early modern travelogues

Chair: Elena Baldassarri (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

Alexandr Osipian (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe -GWZO) – Clothing, foodways, and identity negotiation: early modern Istanbul in Polish, Russian, and Armenian travelogues
Songulen Nazlı (European University Institute) – Ottoman woman’s plural identities through the eyes of the female travellers visiting Istanbul (18th century)

Break (1 hour)

15:30, Panel 2 – One, Plural or What Else? How to study pluralism in the early modern period

Chair: Luca Codignola-Bo (Notre Dame University)

Serena Di Nepi (Università di Roma – La Sapienza) – Questioning Otherness. Some preliminary remarks on conversions and coexistence in early modern cities
Stefano Villani (University of Maryland, College Park) – Modes of conversions and acculturation strategies in early modern Italy
Giampaolo Salice (Università di Cagliari) – On methodology in the study of rural diaspora

8^thOctober, 10:30

Panel 3 – The Plural City: Channeling identity in daily life

Chair: Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri (Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea – ISEM, CNR)

Carmel Cassar (University of Malta) – Fashion, Opulence and Extravagance: Clothing and sumptuary laws in early modern Malta
Tamsin Prideaux (University of Edinburgh) – The role of representatives in negotiations between the authorities and immigrants in Venice, 1550-1700
Filip Novosel (Croatian Institute of History – Hrvatski Institut za Povijest) – Surpassing language barriers in Dalmatian urban space – public notaries in the city of Zadar in the mid 17th century

Break (1 hour)

14:00, Panel 4 – Identity and Longue Durée: Ottoman empire’s political destiny, and its reflection on foreigner identity expressions

Chair: Meropi Anastassiadou (INALCO Paris)

Andreas Bouroutis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) – Bridging western culture and eastern traditions
Angelos Dalachanis (Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine – IHMC, CNRS) – The Visibility of Hellenism: Art collecting and diaspora life in the early 20th-century Alexandria
Kostis Gkotsinas (École Française d’Athènes) – Standing out/blending in: Consumption practices and the settlement of refugees in post-1923 Greece

16:30: Closing Discussion and Greetings

The aim of this workshop was to shed light on daily practices in multicultural societies, in the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Entangled Worlds was held at College Park on 8th and 9th April 2019, as part of the events hosted at The Nathan & Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies, at UMD.

Focusing on foodways, multilingual practices, and sexuality the two-days encounter was intended to generate a discussion on how identities are created and re-affirmed in areas with an elevated level of cultural intermingling. It is precisely in these plural spaces:

where one is most likely to encounter a stranger or foreigner […] often originated from afar and […] distinguished by language, physical appearance, dress, beliefs or practices, characteristics covered by the slippery modern terms ‘ethnicity’ of ‘cultural identity’.
Derek Keene, ‘Segregation, Zoning and Assimilation in Medieval Towns’

The workshop created a fruitful space of discussion in which MedRoute received its first feedback, starting from Professor Francesca Trivellato‘s thoughtful one. It was attended by scholars for US and Europe and it was concluded by a wonderful keynote on Maltese language of Professor Michael Cooperson. The opening reception was accompanied by the Mediterranean sounds of Trio Trela.