Open call for applications to participate in the Mediterranean crossings. Soldiers, prisoners and converts between permeable borders (16th-18th centuries)
Deadline: 7th February
Dates: 13th-14th January 2021
Place: Palermo (Italy)
Scientific Coordinators: Giovanna FIUME (giovanna.fiume@unipa.it), Rita FOTI (rita.foti@unipa.it) and Bruno POMARA (bruno.pomara@uv.es).
Scope: The plurality of religions and legal-normative systems coexisting in the Mediterranean spaces has generated complex configurations which escape unilateral considerations and call into question the differentiation between distinct “cultural universes”. On the contrary, even in times of strong conflict, exchanges, connections and zones of contact between Christian and Muslim societies are highlighted from multiple perspectives. In particular, a now impressive bibliography concerns the theme of forced migration and mobility, on the one side, and transcultural interactions and religious conversions, on the other one. The purpose of the congress is to involve scholars from different countries in a comparative and multidisciplinary discussion. By focusing and interweaving individual and group trajectories, as well as institutional actors and legal-regulatory productions, papers may answer some of the following questions:
- What are the rules, legal resources, political-religious, diplomatic and legal discourses of Mediterranean mobility and migration? How are they produced, used and negotiated? Which formal and informal practices do they give rise to?
- What kind of contacts, crossings, exchanges, conflicts, disputes characterize mobility taking into account the different geographical, religious and socio-cultural areas across the Mediterranean?
- What are the individual and group paths within and across confessional and religious boundaries? What are the actions, the discursive constructions, the processes of definition and redefinition to construct one’s own identity-making instances in conditions of political-religious permeability and/or confessional closures and stiffening of affiliations?
- What role do religion and law play?
- What are the (legal, political, economic, diplomatic, iconographic and literary) forms and instruments of captivity and redemption?
Deadline and details: Researchers interested to participate in the conference are invited to submit their proposals with a title, an abstract (no more than 500 words) and a brief bio (maximum of 15 lines) before 7 February 2020 to: islepalermo@gmail.com.