04 January 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS: Domino Effects and Hybridization of the Mediterranean

The 4th International Conference of Mediterranean Worlds: DominoEffects and Hybridization of the Mediterranean will be held in Istanbul,
Turkey from 5-7 September 2012.


I had nothing to do with this, but it sounds wonderfully close to our own Mediterranean Hybridity Project:

This interdisciplinary conference is hosted by the Department of History, 29 Mayis University, in collaboration with The Mediterranean Seminar, University of California Santa Cruz; Bern University, Department of the History of the Art, TransMediterraneanStudies.

The deadline for session and paper submissions is 27 February 2012. For submission guidelines, see http://medworldsfour.wordpress.com/deadline/.


There are countless discussions and publications, case studies and unresolved questions, and eventually, research projects on “histories in and the history of the Mediterranean”, which all underline the commonalities and differences between the cultures and histories of the region. One issue should be kept in mind when considering these: It is no doubt very easy to be captivated by delightful similarities, overlooking diversity or, on the other extreme, to see insurmountable differences under the spell of modern national or global theories.

However, the Mediterranean, a place of constant flux, should be more accurately described as ‘hybrid’: Frontier societies and particularly shores share an amalgam of cosmopolitan socio-economic and political structures.

Shifts of ideas, modes of production, methodology, science, religion, language are among dynamics brought about successively by the various influxes to the region and yield hybrid outcomes. The dislocation of substances, structures, hierarchies, languages, religions and traditions in a domino effect facilitates the re-emergence of these social elements in the new location in novel and ingenious ways. In time, their imported or suspended character takes on a more permanent and assimilated character – a hybrid is born.

Here, we would like to focus on both the source and the outcome of various fluxes, as well as the process of generation, aiming not just to detect origins or traces of separate entities but also to study the liminality of the emerging planes. Our goal is to focus on the effects of mixture upon various elements in the Mediterranean, dwelling on outcomes that are not easily labeled as one thing or other, defining the critical stages of change. This would, in a sense, be an extension of the macro-micro history dialectic and the diversity of the local
regional outcomes as analyzed by Braudel, Horden-Purcell, McCormick and Wickham which retain an undoubted appeal and interest as Magris and Matjievic have often pointed out.


For further information, see http://medworldsfour.wordpress.com/

See also the information on papers and panels.

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