Abstract

This lecture is organised by the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Network based at CRASSH.

This year’s seminar series will create a forum for scholars to confront, explore and/or challenge the now ubiquitous concept of ‘Mediterraneanism’, as a useful category of inquiry. Cultural anthropologists; intellectual, literary, economic, political and art historians; ethnobiologists; geographers and musicologists have all appropriated the term – with varying levels of success – in an attempt to examine the shared (or otherwise) characteristics of the societies of that region throughout time. How far might the ‘Mediterranean’ extend beyond its shoreline and its port cities before the designation spreads so thin as to be meaningless? To what extent might Mediterraneanism be a helpful way to focus discussions about dissemination of goods, flora, fauna, art, ideas and literature between, for example, Baghdad and Paris?

For further information please visit: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/page/385/med—middle-eastern.htm