Calls for Papers/Nov 28, 2018

Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th – 15th centuries)

Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th – 15th centuries) lead image

Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th – 15th centuries), Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), Barcelona, July 8–11, 2019

The sixth biennial conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean (SMM) will take place in Barcelona, at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), from Monday 8th July (afternoon) to Thursday 11th July 2019 (lunch time). The theme of the conference is “Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th – 15th centuries)”.

The medieval Mediterranean was not a static maritime space. In recent years, studies have focused on Mediterranean dynamics, connections, encounters and entanglements. What approaches do researches from History, Literature, Archaeology, Philology and other disciplines adopt to better understand the complexity of the medieval Mediterranean? How and to what extent did multiple agents, phenomena and factors interact to shape and intertwine the multidimensional spheres of the Mediterranean? We welcome papers from all disciplines that study movement and mobility from different perspectives in and across the medieval Mediterranean and its extensions, both physical and imagined. This theme invites a variety of lines of inquiry.

Topics of the conference could include, but are by no means limited to:

  • Multicultural contacts, transculturation and assimilation in the medieval
  • Mediterranean Medieval Mediterranean crossings
  • Circulation of political, religious and cultural ideas
  • Circulation of people and commodities
  • Major and minor, forced and voluntary migrations Pilgrimage and religious mobility
  • Diplomacy and its agents
  • Commerce and its agents
  • Military expeditions and coastal defence Naval technology and navigation
  • Medieval Mediterranean geostrategy Geographical explorations
  • Links between the Mediterranean and connected seas (Atlantic, Black Sea, Red Sea)

Proposals for panels of 3 papers, 20-minute papers, or posters are welcome. Panel proposals will be given priority over individual papers.