MOVEMENT AND MOBILITY IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN
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 8 July (afternoon) to Thursday 11 July 2019 (lunch time). An optional excursion for attendees will be available on Friday 12 July.
The conference will be dedicated to the memory of the former President of the Society, Professor Simon Barton. On Thursday 11 July, an event will be held in honour of him.
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, a number of which are suggested below.
Topics of the conference could include, but are by no means limited to:
- Multicultural contacts, transculturation and assimilation in the medieval
- 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)
Participants are encouraged to submit proposals for panels of 3 papers. The panel proposer should collate the three abstracts (including titles, presenters’ names, affiliations, short CVs or most important publications and keywords) and submit them together, indicating clearly the rationale behind the planned panel.
We also invite 300‐400 word abstracts for 20‐minute individual papers relating to the conference theme. Nevertheless, panel proposals will be given priority over individual papers.
Poster proposals (title and short description up to 200 words, including name, affiliation, short CV or most important publications and keywords as well) are also welcome.