Mediterranean Studies Research Focus Group
Conveners:
Claudio Fogu (Professor, French and Italian), cfogu@french-ital.ucsb.edu
Edward English (Visiting Associate Professor, Medieval
Studies and History), English@history.ucsb.edu
Mission Statement
The RFG on Mediterranean Studies proposes to continue
its activities in 2007-2008, and to carry on the thematic
focus on travel in the Mediterranean region from the
previous academic year. By organizing a series of public
talks and workshops around this topic, stretching from
the odysseys of antiquity to contemporary mass tourism,
the RFG aims to explore the status of the Mediterranean
as a space of exchange—at once cultural, social,
political and economic—that links as well as differentiates
north and south, Christian and Muslim, Roman and “barbarian”,
developed and developing worlds, EU and Arab League.
This space is traversed at different points in time
by traders, colonists, military forces, merchants, artists,
explorers, pirates, intellectuals, exiles, wanderers,
tourists, immigrants, and many others heading from north
to south or south to north, from east to west or west
to east; their varying itineraries and aims help us
to see the Mediterranean as a polyvalent, over determined
“place” joining together the histories of
three continents connected to it.
In the academic year 2006-2007 our speakers were prevalently
focused on the Medieval and Early-modern eras. This
year—reflecting in part the addition of a new
co-convener Prof. Claudio Fogu, French and Italian—we
plan to focus on the modern to contemporary Mediterranean.
Our planned speakers include Professor Lucia Re (UCLA),
who is completing a book on the Italian community in
Alexandria, Egypt; Shawn Anderson (UCLA), who will speak
on Fascist new towns and urban projects in the Mediterranean
basin; Robert Davis, (OSU), author of a book on modern
tourism in Venice; and John Marino (UCSD) who might
be asked to speak about concepts of movement around
the Mediterranean world in the early modern era and
in twentieth-century scholarship. Local scholars such
as Debra Blumenthal and Edward English will be asked
to discuss traveling merchants and their cultural and
economic interactions with the peoples living along
the borders of the Mediterranean Sea in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries.
Participants
Faculty:
Robert Williams (Art and Architecture)
Carole Paul (Art and Architecture)
Francis Dunn (Classics)
Robert Morstein-Marx (Classics)
Michael O’Connell (English)
Maurizia Boscagli (Emglish)
Cythnia J. Brown (French and Italian)
Catherine Nesci (French and Italian)
Cynthia Skenazi (French and Italian)
William F. Prizer (Music)
Richard Hecht (Religious Studies)
Roger Friedland (Religious Studies)
Viola Miglio (Spanish and Portuguese)
Harvey Sharrer (Spanish and Portuguese)
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi (Sociology)
Hillary Bernstein (History)
Debra Blumenthal (History)
Carol Lansing (History)
Sharon Farmer (History)
Elizabeth Digeser (History)
Stephen Humphries (History)
John Wolte Infong Lee (History)
Michael Osborne (History)
Erika Rappaport (History)
Report on Activities, 2006 - 2007
As co-conveners of the Mediterranean Studies RFG, we
wish to report on this academic year's activities (2006-2007).
The following five lectures and events were sponsored
either wholly or in part by the RFG:
i) Nov. 14, 2006. Mary Lampe, PhD Candidate, Dept. of
History, UCSB: workshop presentation on “Survival
and Profit: Notarial Witnesses in Medieval Palermo.”
Ms Lampe spoke about her research for her dissertation
on merchants and business network in thirteenth-century
Sicily.
ii) Dec. 8, 2006. Prof. Sharon Farmer, UCSB History
Dept. In a talk, entitled “The Empire Comes Back:
Mediterranean Immigrants in Paris and Northern France
in the Age of the Crusades,” Dr. Farmer proposed
an overall rethinking of the relationship between Northern
France and the Mediterranean world in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Drawing on evidence from Paris
and the county of Artois, she argued that Mediterranean-area
immigrants made very significant contributions in the
late-Medieval period, ranging from the establishment
of such key economic sectors as luxury craft manufacturing
and trade in Paris to the development of new horse breeding
techniques.
iii) Feb. 28, 2007. Professor Lester K. Little, Dwight
W. Morrow Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the
Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College, gave a
public lecture on “Two Medieval Pandemics: The
Plague of Justinian and the Black Death.” Professor
Little discussed the historiography and epidemiology
of the series of “plagues” that struck the
Mediterranean regions from the sixth to the mid-eighth
centuries, especially relating them to the later plagues
of the fourteenth century.
iv) May 8, 2007. Prof. Carole Paul, History of Art,
UCSB: Public talk on “The Spectacle of Art on
the Grand Tour.” In this talk Dr. Paul examined
the displays of art that travelers encountered on the
Grand Tour in Rome, as well as their response to them.
Dr. Paul focused particularly on the experience of art
as a kind of social and cultural performance for early
modern viewers.
v) May 24, 2007. Prof. William Tronzo of the Stanford
Humanities Center gave a public presentation entitled
“Zisa and Cuba: Gardens and the Image-Performative.”
Focusing on the magnificent pavilions erected in the
gardens and parks built by twelfth-century Norman kings
of Sicily around Palermo, Prof. Tronzo argued that these
architectural structures were inspired to the painted
maqarnas ceiling of the Norman palatine chapel of the
Royal palace in Palermo.
We spent nearly our entire $1000 annual budget on sponsorship
of the abovementioned events, including receptions,
hosting meals for speakers, etc.
