Mediterranean Perspectives

From The Mediterranean Seminar and Palgrave Macmillan: A series for the latest and most exciting scholarship in the new inter-disciplinary field of Mediterranean Studies.

Overview:

In the past decade, Mediterranean Studies has emerged as one of the most exciting and dynamic fields in the Humanities. As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting focus away from histories of the origins and development of phenomena predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens vistas onto histories of contact, circulation, and exchange in all their complexity while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and intra-disciplinary scholarship.

We interpret the Mediterranean in the widest sense: the sea and the lands around it as well as the European, Asian and African hinterlands connected to it by networks of culture, trade, politics and religion. While the series emphasizes the span from Late Antiquity through Early Modernity, we welcome proposals ranging from late prehistory to the contemporary.

Projects engaging methodologies from history (political, economic, institutional, social), literary studies, history of science and technology, religious studies, art history, philosophy, ethnic studies, anthropology and sociology are welcome. Themes emphasized include ethnic and religious identity and interaction, cultural and technological development, conflict and collaboration, acculturation and transmission, trade and commerce, colonization and immigration.

Works that engage with and challenge established historical paradigms, meta-narratives, chronologies, and disciplinary boundaries are especially welcome.
We are particularly interested in projects which have a focus "of" the Mediterranean, rather than "in" the Mediterranean, and which incorporate comparative, revisionist and inter-disciplinary perspectives.

What we publish:
- original manuscripts or monographs with a Mediterranean Studies perspective or orientation
- volumes of collected essays
- scholarly editions and translations of primary documents
- translations of innovative scholarship previously published in non-English languages will be considered
- interdisciplinary, comparative, and revisionist work is particularly welcome.

The strengths of the series:
- first series dedicated to Mediterranean Studies as a field
- an editorial board and reviewers drawn from leading scholars in a range of fields and specializations
- all submissions will be subject to a rigorous and constructive double-blind peer review process
- integration of publications and authors into the projects and programs of the Mediterranean Seminar

Why publish with the Mediterranean Studies?
- quick turn-around time from manuscript acceptance/submission to book-in-hand
- Palgrave MacMillan is a leading publisher of academic books with a worldwide distribution and marketing infrastructure and a strong commitment to sales
- promotion through the Mediterranean Seminar, a forum of some 2,000 specialists and consortium of projects and institutions, across the world and in a range of institutions
Compare us to the competition:
- volumes are accessibly priced
- many will be brought out in affordable paperback
- except in the case of heavily illustrated volumes, author subventions are not required

Series Editors:

  • Brian A. Catlos, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder/Research Associate of Humanities, University of California, Santa Cruz

  • Sharon Kinoshita, Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz

Catlos and Kinoshita are co-directors of the Mediterranean Seminar, an international forum promoting research and pedagogy in Mediterranean Studies that organizes research projects, colloquia, conferences, and workshops dedicated to the development of this exciting new field. Every effort will be made to integrate series authors and their work into the programs of The Mediterranean Seminar.

Editorial Board
Our Editorial Board consists of scholars engaged in cutting-edge and revisionary work on the various aspects of Mediterranean history and culture utilizing a range of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies.

  • Fred Astren, Professor of Jewish Studies/Middle East & Islamic Studies, San Francisco State University.

  • Julia Clancy-Smith, Professor of History, University of Arizona.

  • Steven A. Epstein, Ahmanson-Murphy Distinguished Professor of Medieval History, University of Kansas

  • Maribel Fierro, Research Professor, Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East at the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain)

  • Mercedes García Arenal, Research Professor, Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo (CSIC) (Spain)

  • Harvey (Chaim) Hames, Professor of History, Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel)

  • Eva R. Hoffman, Associate Professor of Art & Art History, Tufts University

  • Carolina López-Ruiz, Associate Professor of Greek & Latin, Ohio State University

  • Karla Mallette, Associate Professor of Romance and Near Eastern Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Michigan

  • Christophe Picard, Professor of History, Université de Paris I-Sorbonne (France)

  • Claudia Rapp, Professor of Byzantine History, Universität Wien (Austria)

  • Dwight Reynolds, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Cynthia Robinson, Associate Professor of Art History and Middle Eastern Studies, Cornell University

  • Daniel L. Selden, Professor of Classics, World Literature, and Jewish Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

  • Baki Tezcan, Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies, University of California, Davis

  • John Tolan, Professor of History, Université de Nantes (France).

  • Dominique Valérian, Professor of History, Université de Lyon (France)

  • David Wacks, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Oregon

Proposing a volume:
Proposals and manuscripts should be prepared according to Palgrave/MacMillan guidelines and submitted directly to the Chirsti Lue at Palgrave.
Prospective authors and editors are encouraged to first submit a query letter to the Series Editors outlining in clear terms the focus, scope, and methodology of the project.

Palgrave Macmillan is a global academic publisher serving learning and scholarship in higher education, with headquarters in New York and London. Via the Macmillan Group's international sales and distribution infrastructure, Palgrave books are sold throughout the world, including North America, Europe, Africa, the Mideast, and Asia. All Palgrave titles are rigorously peer-reviewed and published in print, as individual e-books, and on the Palgrave Connect online research platform for scholars, students, and general readers

Titles:

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Catlos, Brian & Sharon Kinoshita, eds., Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medieval and Early Modern Studies  [2017] • RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book provides a systematic framework for the emerging field of Mediterranean studies, collecting essays from scholars of history, literature, religion, and art history that seek a more fluid understanding of “Mediterranean.” It emphasizes the interdependence of Mediterranean regions and the rich interaction (both peaceful and bellicose, at sea and on land) between them. It avoids applying the national, cultural and ethnic categories that developed with the post-Enlightenment domination of northwestern Europe over the academy, working instead towards a dynamic and thoroughly interdisciplinary picture of the Mediterranean. Including an extensive bibliography and a conversation between leading scholars in the field, Can We Talk Mediterranean? lays the groundwork for a new critical and conceptual approach to the region.
Contributors: Brian A. Catlos, Claire Farago, Cecily J. Hilsdale, Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita.

Goldwyn, A. J. & Silverman, R. M., eds., Mediterranean modernism : intercultural exchange and aesthetic development [2016] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book explores how Modernist movements all across the Mediterranean basin differed from those of other regions. The chapters show how the political and economic turmoil of a period marked by world war, revolution, decolonization, nationalism, and the rapid advance of new technologies compelled artists, writers, and other intellectuals to create a new hybrid Mediterranean Modernist aesthetic which sought to balance the tensions between local and foreign, tradition and innovation, and colonial and postcolonial. 
Contributors: Rob Baum, David W. Bird, Defne Çizakça, Vasiliki Dimoula, Marijan Dović, Federica Frediani, Adam J. Goldwyn, David W. Bird, Gavin Murray-Miller, Dina A. Ramadan, Charles Sabatos, Juan Herrero-Senés, Renée M. Silverman, and Nadine Wassef.
**Winner: 2017 SAMLA (South Atlantic Modern Language Association) Studies Book Award -- Edited Collections  

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Walsh, M. J. K., ed., The Armenian Church of Famagusta and the Complexity of Cypriot Heritage. Prayers Long Silent [2017] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book explores seven centuries of change in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean world through the rise and fall of Famagusta’s medieval Armenian Church. An examination of the complex and its art escorts the reader from the era of the Crusades in Lusignan Cyprus, through the rise and fall of the Venetian, Ottoman and British Empires, to the political stasis of the present day. The Armenian church was a home for displaced villagers during the post-independence era, became a military storage facility post-1974 and eventually fell into abandonment once again.  This study represents a pioneering history of the Armenian community in Famagusta and a probing analysis of the art and architecture it left behind. It is also a permanent record of the long-term engagement and commitment of Nanyang Technological University Singapore, the World Monuments Fund, and the Famagusta Municipality to protect this precious site, under extremely challenging circumstances.
Contributors: Michele Bacci, Irene Bonacini, Lucie Bonato, Tomasz Borowski, Andrés Burgos Braga, Alessandro Chechi, Siew Ann Cheong, Nicholas Coureas, Francisco M. Fernandes, Dan Frodsham, , Gohar Grigoryan, Gül İnanç, Thomas Kaffenberger, Dickran Kouymjian, Julie H. Liew, Sharon Evelyn Little, Paulo B. Lourenço,  Rocco Mazzeo, Nuno Mendes, Andrea Nanetti, , João M. Pereira, Silvia Prat, Duncan Rowland, Werner Schmid, Giorgia Sciutto, Ender Jiang Shutao, Michael J. K. Walsh, and Yuan Yi.

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elhariry, yasser & Talbayev, Edwige Tamalet, eds., Critically Mediterranean. Temporalities, Aesthetics, and Deployments of a Sea in Crisis [2018] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
Traversed by masses of migrants and wracked by environmental and economic change, the Mediterranean has come to connote crisis. In this context, Critically Mediterranean asks how the theories and methodologies of Mediterranean studies may be brought to bear upon the modern and contemporary periods. Contributors explore how the Mediterranean informs philosophy, phenomenology, the poetics of time and space, and literary theory. Ranging from some of the earliest twentieth-century material on the Mediterranean to Edmond Amran El Maleh, Christoforos Savva, Orhan Pamuk, and Etel Adnan, the essays ask how modern and contemporary Mediterraneans may be deployed in political, cultural, artistic, and literary practice. The critical Mediterranean that emerges is plural and performative—a medium through which subjects may negotiate imagined relations with the world around them. Vibrant and deeply interdisciplinary, Critically Mediterranean offers timely interventions for a sea in crisis.
Contributors: Hakim Abderrezak, John Baldacchino, Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Norbert Bugeja, Antonis Danos, Annika Döring, yasser elhariry, Claudio Fogu, Olivia C. Harrison, Peregrine Horden, Isabelle Keller-Privat, Michal Raizen, Jonathan H. Shannon, and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev.

Babayan, Kathryn & Pifer, Michael, eds., Armenian Mediterranean: Words and Worlds in Motion [2018] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book rethinks the Armenian people as significant actors in the context of Mediterranean and global history. Spanning a millennium of cross-cultural interaction and exchange across the Mediterranean world, essays move between connected histories, frontier studies, comparative literature, and discussions of trauma, memory, diaspora, and visual culture. Contributors dismantle narrow, national ways of understanding Armenian literature; propose new frameworks for mapping the post-Ottoman Mediterranean world; and navigate the challenges of writing national history in a globalized age. A century after the Armenian genocide, this book reimagines the borders of the “Armenian,” pointing to a fresh vision for the field of Armenian studies that is omnivorously comparative, deeply interconnected, and rich with possibility.
Contributors: Sebouh David Aslanian, Marie-Aude Baronian, Tamar M. Boyadjian, Murat Cankara, Vahram Danielyan, Myrna Douzjian, David Kazanjian, Sergio La Porta, G. J. Libaridian, Karla Mallette, Michael Pifer, Hakem Al-Rustom, Vahe Sahakyan, and Alison Vacca.

Abate, Mark, ed., Convivencia and Medieval Spain: Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick [2018] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This volume is a collection of essays on medieval Spain, written by leading scholars on three continents, that celebrates the career of Thomas F. Glick.  Using a wide array of innovative methodological approaches, these essays offer insights on areas of medieval Iberian history that have been of particular interest to Glick: irrigation, the history of science, and cross-cultural interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. By bringing together original research on topics ranging from water management and timekeeping to poetry and women’s history, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and reflects the wide-ranging, gap-bridging work of Glick himself, a pivotal figure in the historiography of medieval Spain.
Contributors include: Mark T. Abate, Torki Bin Fahad, Thomas Burman, Brian A. Catlos, Jessica Coope, William Granara, Enric Guinot, Douglas Kierdorf, Helena Kirchner, Michael McVaugh, Mark Meyerson, Jonathan Ray, AbdulGhafour I. Rozi, Julio Samso Moya, Josep Torro, Lydia Walker, Michael Weber, and Kenneth Baxter Wolf.

Fogu, Claudio, The Fishing Net and the Spider Web. Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians [ 2020] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book explores the role of Mediterranean imaginaries in one of the preeminent tropes of Italian history: the formation or 'making of' Italians. While previous scholarship on the construction of Italian identity has often focused too narrowly on the territorial notion of the nation-state, and over-identified Italy with its capital, Rome, this book highlights the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. From this perspective, this book re-interprets key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, and thereby challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete. Ultimately, it argues that Mediterranean imaginaries acted as counterweights to the solidification of a 'national' Italian identity, and still constitute alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.

Marcos Cobaleda, María, ed., Artistic and Cultural Dialogues in the Late Medieval Mediterranean [2021] - RIS citation - Table of Contents
This book analyses the artistic and cultural legacy of Western Islamic societies and their interactions with Islamic, Christian and Jewish societies in the framework of the late medieval Mediterranean, from a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives. The book, organised in four parts, addresses the Andalusi legacy from its presence in the East and the West; analyses the relations and transfers between Al-Andalus and the artistic productions of the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula; explores other manifestations of the Andalusi legacy in the fields of knowledge, construction, identity and religious studies; and reconsiders ornamental transfers and exchanges in artistic manifestations between East and West across the Mediterranean basin. Contributors include: Javier Albarrán, Maribel Fierro, Susana Calvo Capilla, Inés Monteira, Doron Bauer, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Michael A. Conrad, Sandra M. G. Pinto,  Ana María Carballeira Debasa,  Noelia Silva Santa-Cruz, Laura Rodríguez Peinado, Azucena Hernández Pérez and María Marcos Cobaleda.

Proglio, G., Hawthorne, C., Danewid, I., Saucier, K., Grimaldi, G., Pesarini, A., Raeymakers, T., eds., The Black Mediterranean Bodies, Borders and Citizenship [2021] RIS citation - Table of Contents
Edited by The Black Mediterranean Collective, this volume aims to problematise and rethink the contemporary European migrant crisis in the Central Mediterranean through the lens of the Black Mediterranean. Bringing together scholars working in geography, political theory, sociology, and cultural studies, this volume takes the Black Mediterranean as a starting point for asking and answering a set of crucial questions about the racialized production of borders, bodies, and citizenship in contemporary Europe: what is the role of borders in controlling migrant flows from North Africa and the Middle East?; what is the place for black bodies in the Central Mediterranean context?; what is the relevance of the citizenship in reconsidering black subjectivities in Europe? The volume will be divided into three parts. After the introduction, which will provide an overview of the theoretical framework and the individual contributions, Part I focuses on the problem of borders, Part II features essays focused on the body, and Part III is dedicated to citizenship.
Contributors include: Camilla Hawthorne, Angelica Pesarini, Gabriele Proglio, Timothy Raeymaekers, Ida Danewid, Vivian Gerrand, Giulia Grechi, Giuseppe Grimaldi, and P. Khalil Saucier.

Davis-Secord, Sarah, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose, eds., Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean: Essays in Memory of Olivia Remie Constable [2021] RIS Citation. Table of contents [pdf] [Full access to articles]
This book is a collaborative contribution that expands our understanding of how interfaith relations, both real and imagined, developed across medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean. The volume pays homage to the late Olivia Remie Constable’s scholarship and presents innovative, thought-provoking, interdisciplinary investigations of cross-cultural exchange, ranging widely across time and geography. Divided into two parts, “Perceptions of the ‘Other’” and “Interfaith relations,” this volume features scholars engaging with church art, literature, historiography, scientific treatises, and polemics, in order to study how the religious “Other” was depicted to serve different purposes and audiences. There are also microhistories that examine the experiences of individual families, classes, and communities as they interacted with one another in their own specific contexts. Several of these studies draw their source material from church and state archives as well as jurisprudential texts, and span the centuries from the late medieval to early modern periods. Contributors include: Thomas Burman, Brian Catlos, Paul Cobb, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Ana Echevarria, Molly Greene, Margaret Meserve, Mark Meyerson, Teofilo Ruiz, Gretchen Star-LeBeau, Janina Safran, & Ryan Szpiech.

Pulitano, Elvira. Mediterranean ARTivism. Art, Activism, and Migration in Europe [2022] RIS Citation. Table of contents [pdf]
As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting focus away from histories of the origins and developments of phenomena predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens vistas onto histories of contact, circulation and exchange in all their complexity while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and intra-disciplinary scholarship, making it one of the most exciting and dynamic fields in the humanities. Mediterranean Perspectives interprets the Mediterranean in the widest sense: the sea and the lands around it, as well as the European, Asian and African hinterlands connected to it by networks of culture, trade, politics, and religion. This series publishes monographs and edited collections that explore these new fields, from the span of Late Antiquity through Early Modernity to the contemporary.

Tai, Emily Sohmer & Kathryn L. Reyerson, eds., Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily. Maritime Violence, Cultural Exchange, and Imagination in the Mediterranean, 800–1700 [2022] RIS Citation. Table of contents [pdf]
This book synthesizes three fields of inquiry on the cutting edge of scholarship in medieval studies and world history: the history of medieval Sicily; the history of maritime violence, often named as piracy; and digital humanities. By merging these seemingly disparate strands in the scholarship of world history and medieval studies into a single volume, this book offers new insights into the history of medieval Sicily and the study of maritime violence. As several of the essays in this volume demonstrate, maritime violence fundamentally shaped experience in the medieval Mediterranean, as every ship that sailed, even those launched for commerce or travel, anticipated the possibility of encountering pirates, or dabbling in piracy themselves. Contributors include: Mark Aloisio, David Bramoullé, Clifford R. Backman, Nicola Carpentieri, Joanna Drell, Dawn Marie Hayes, Joseph P. Hayes, John Manke, Lawrence V. Mott, Stephan Nicolussi-Köhler, Amy G. Remensnyder, Kathryn L. Reyerson, , Timothy Smit, Charles D. Stanton & Emily Sohmer Tai.

Forthcoming:

Bernhard, Patrick. Mussolini's Mediterranean: The Fascist Dream of Empire and its International Impact.
Bringing together scholars from various disciplines and countries, including specialists in Fascism and the ‘new imperial history’, this book stresses the importance of the interwar period as a transformative moment for the Mediterranean.  The chapters analyse the biopolitical, geopolitical and chronopolitical visions that were developed for the Mediterranean within transnational and inter-imperial frameworks. How was Mussolini’s Mediterranean perceived abroad, and what aspects were emulated because they meshed with the specific needs and expectations of other societies? How were novel elements merged with existing ideas of empire? What was, by contrast, rejected, because it did not accord with national modes of imperial thought? Furthermore, this volume is interested in the interactions that took place between European interwar societies, and how the Mediterranean was reimagined as an imperial space. How did the rival empires evaluate and make sense of their respective schemes for transforming the region? Finally, the volume also considers how associated cross-cultural learning contributed to the formation of national identities.

Franco Llopis Borja and Laura Stagno, eds., After the Battle of Lepanto: Perceptions of the Other in the Mediterranean Region, 1400–1800.
This edited collection aims to analyze the Battle of Lepanto's repercussions on the relations between Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Together, these essays will help readers understand the mechanisms through which alterity is created in literature, history, and art history, by breaking down established stereotypes of the "Other" and defining stock figures ranging from the Turk as enemy to the captive slave or the "friendly Moor". It will study the iconography of the battle and compare it with that of other military confrontations in the history of the same regions. Likewise, it will look at the symbolic systems used in ephemeral displays and works of art to mediate the message of Christianity's confrontation with Islam, especially in the context of Genoa, which has received little attention in historiography.

Franco Llopis Borja and Laura Stagno, eds., Early Modern Images of Muslims in Southern Europe
Through various case studies, this volume shows how the interrelations between Muslims and Christians were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Early Modern Period, just when some important clashes, such as the Conquest of Tunis by Charles V and the Battle of Lepanto, took place. It aims to accomplish the following things: analyze the mechanisms by which alterity is constructed in the Mediterranean region through texts and images; map the perception and visualization of Muslims and Turks chronologically and geographically; study the important role of other regions such as the Adriatic or Northern Europe in the creation of the image of Islam that was taken up by Mediterranean artists and intellectuals; understand the spaces in which objects were exchanged between Christians and Muslims, paying special attention to those objects that were used for different purposes in the two cultures; rethink the concept of “Orientalism” in the Mediterranean world through extant works of art and the reactions they elicited among their audiences; determine how the attitude combining admiration and awe influenced visual culture in the modern period, creating permeable boundaries in the conception of the Other; and lastly, show how fear of the “Turk” was exploited by religious orders such as the Jesuits and was used as an instrument of conversion in the East.

Moreno, Aaron M. Performing Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Mozarab and Greek Elite of Toledo and Messina, 1100–1350
Drawing from extensive Arabic, Greek, and Latinate archival research in Spain, Sicily, and France, this book argues that a number of Toledan Mozarabs and Messinese Greeks had considerable motivation to identify as members of their respective communities because attractive judicial, notarial, and clerical positions were reserved for these indigenous Christians. Accordingly, many of these Mozarabs and Greeks who became judges, notaries, and clergy sought to publicly affirm – or perform – their communal identity, whether through lineage or by emphasizing their judicial, lingual, and/or liturgical ethnic markers. This study’s comparative nature helps us to understand that both communities were part of a larger phenomenon of intra-Christian coexistence in the medieval Mediterranean, and the extended chronological span of this work allows us to examine the divergences in each community’s history, which in turn facilitates a fuller comprehension of the shifting significances of their ethnic markers.