Mediterranean Studies II: East and West at the Center, 1050-1600
(Fall 2009)
Illustration from a map in Cosmographia Ptolémeé, Nicholas Germanus (ed.), 1482.
"Mediterranean Studies II: East and West at the Center, 1050-1600" is the second part of a two-part seminar series organized by Professor Zrinka Stahuljak (UCLA French & Francophone Studies and CMRS Associate Director for Medieval Studies) and funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This seminar has been considering the Mediterranean as an entity, the center for both East and West, and part of a world system rather than a line of separation between the emerging “West” and an exotic “East.” Accordingly, starting in the West, in the Iberian peninsula and Occitania, we have been concentrating throughout the seminar primarily on the central and “Eastern” Mediterranean, from Sicily and the Italian Peninsula, to the Maghreb, Adriatic, Byzantium, Crete, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Mamluk Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire. For the second part of the seminar series we have invited our guests to reflect on the methodology applicable to Mediterranean Studies.
Seminar sessions are three hours in length and have a workshop format. The guest speaker presents a lecture during the first hour. After a short break, participants reconvene and discuss the topic introduced in the lecture.
Monday, October 5, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Brian Catlos (History, UC Santa Cruz) “Accursed, Superior Men: Power and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean” Seminar Leader: Teofilo Ruiz (History, UCLA)
Readings:
Brian Catlos, “To Catch a Spy: The Case of Zayn al-Din and Ibn Dukhan”
Joshua C. Birk, “From Borderlands to Borderlines: Narrating the Past of Twelfth-Century Sicily”
Bernard Lewis, “An Anti-Jewish Ode: The Qasida of Abu Ishaq Against Joseph ibn Nagrella”
Monday, October 12, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Sharon Kinoshita (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) “How To Do Things in the Medieval Mediterranean”
Seminar Leader: Zrinka Stahuljak (French & Francophone Studies, UCLA)
Readings:
Sharon Kinoshita, “Chrétien de Troyes' Cligés in the Medieval Mediterranean”
Monday, October 19, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Oumelbanine Zhiri (Literature, UC San Diego) “Archiving the Orient in Early Modern Europe”
Seminar Leaders: Christine Chism (English, UCLA) and Peter Stacey (History, UCLA)
Readings:
Jan Schmidt, “Between Author and Library Shelf: The Intriquing History of Some Middle Eastern Manuscripts Acquired by Public Collections in the Netherlands Before 1800”
Nicholas Dew, “The Order of Oriental Knowledge: the Making of D'Herbelot's Bibliothèque Orientale”
Peter N. Miller, “Peiresc, the Levant and the Mediterranean”
Monday, October 26, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306Professor Jocelyne Dakhlia(Centre de Recherches Historiques, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) “Lingua franca: Hybridity and Conflict in the Mediterranean”
Seminar Leader: Zrinka Stahuljak (French & Francophone Studies, UCLA)
Readings:
Mrs. Broughton, “Six Years Residence in Algiers”
Henry & Renee Kahane, Andreas Tietze, “The Lingua Franca in the Levant”
Salvatore Santoro, “Lingua Franca in Goldoni's Impresario delle Smirne”
Hugo Schuchard, “The Lingua Franca” from Pidgin and the Creole Language by G.G. Gilbert (Cambridge, 1980)
Monday, November 2, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306Professor Christine Chism (English, UCLA) “Cross-Currents: Ibn Battuta, Ibn Jubayr and the Muslim Mediterranean”
Seminar Leaders: Eric Jager (English, UCLA) and James Schultz (Germanic Languages, UCLA)
Readings:
Roxane L. Euben, “Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge”
H.A.R. Gibb, “The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354”
R.J.C. Broadhurst, “The Travels of Ibn Jubayr”
Monday, November 9, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Adnan Husain (History, Queen’s University, Toronto) “The Question of Islam and Muslims in Europe’s Mediterranean”
Seminar Leaders: Gabriel Piterberg (History, UCLA) and Teofilo Ruiz (History, UCLA)
Readings:
Adnan A. Husain, “Introduction” from A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200-1700
Ariel Salzmann, “The Moral Economies of the Pre-Modern Mediterranean” from Living in the Ottoman Ecumenical Community: Essays in Honour of Suraiya Faroqhi, Vera Costantini and Markus Koller, eds.
Further Background:
Henri Pirenne, "The Expansion of Islam in the Mediterranean Basin," in Mohammed and Charlemagne, tr. Miall, pp. 147-85.
Fernand Braudel, "The Sahara, the Second Face of the Mediterranean", The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Volume 1; tr. S. Reynolds, pp. 171-88
Fernand Braudel, "Civilizations: 1. Mobility and Stability of Civilizations 2. Overlapping Civilizations," The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Volume 2; tr. S. Reynolds,pp. 757-801.
Monday, November 16, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Teresa Shawcross(Schulman Research Fellow in History, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University) “Identities in Transition: Historical Writing and Regime Change in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean”
Seminar Leader: Claudia Rapp (History, UCLA)
Readings:
T. Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece (Oxford, 2009) [Introduction, pp. 1-28 and Chapter 10, The Rise of Vernacular Greek Historiography in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, pp.220-237]
Supplementary: T. Shawcross, ‘Re-inventing the Homeland in the Historiography of Frankish Greece: The Fourth Crusade and the Legend of the Trojan War’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 27 (2003) 120-152
Monday, November 23, 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM, Royce Hall 306
Professor Alexander Metcalfe (History, Lancaster University) “The Language(s) of Power in Medieval Sicily”
Seminar Leaders: Christine Chism (English, UCLA) and Peter Stacey (History, UCLA)
Readings:
Alexander Metcalfe, “The art of leisure”
Alexander Metcalfe, “The science of power”
Alexander Metcalfe, “The Muslims of Italy Under Christian Rule”
Related Links
The seminar program for Part 2, Fall 2009 can be downloaded and printed from this PDF file (1.4 MB).
