Cultures, Communities and Conflicts in the Medieval Mediterranean

Cultures, Communities and Conflicts in the Medieval Mediterranean
University of Southampton (UK), 4-6 July 2011

Second Biennial Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
Keynote Speakers: Professor Graham Loud (University of Leeds)
Dr Anna Contadini (SOAS, London)

The University of Southampton is proud to host the 2011 second
biennial conference of the Society for the medieval Mediterranean.
This three-day conference will bring scholars together to explore the
interaction of the various peoples, societies, faiths and cultures of
the medieval Mediterranean, a region which had been commonly
represented as divided by significant religious and cultural
differences. The objective of the conference is to highlight the
extent to which the medieval Mediterranean was not just an area of
conflict but also a highly permeable frontier across which people,
goods and ideas crossed and influenced neighbouring cultures and
societies. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers in the fields of
archaeology, art and architecture, ethnography, history (including
the histories of science, medicine and cartography), languages,
literature, music, philosophy and religion. Submission on the
following topics would be particularly welcome:
• Activities of missionary orders
• Artistic contacts and exchanges
• Byzantine and Muslim navies
• Captives and slaves
• Cargoes, galleys and warships
• Cartography
• Costume and vestments
• Diplomacy
• Judaism and Jewish Mediterranean History
• Literary contacts and exchanges
• Material Culture
• Minority Populations in the Christian and Islamic Worlds.
• Mirrors for Princes
• Music, sacred and secular
• Port towns/city states
• Relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
• Religious practices: saints, cults and heretics
• Scientific exchange, including astronomy, medicine and mathematics
• Seafaring, seamanship and shipbuilding
• Sufis & Sufi Orders in North Africa and the Levant
• Sultans, kings and other rulers
• Trade and Pilgrimage
• Travel writing
• Warfare: mercenaries and crusaders
Please send any enquiries and abstracts of papers of 300 words
maximum together with a brief CV to the organisers, Dr Francois Soyer
(f.j.soyer@soton.ac.uk) and Dr Rebecca Bridgman (rmb77@cam.ac.uk). We also welcome proposals for 3-paper sessions. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 1 October
2010.