The COST Action “Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750)” [CA 18129] is launching a call for a conference “Soldiers, prisoners and converts between permeable borders in the Mare Nostrum (16th-18th centuries)”. The event that we are disseminating is being organised within this project, which as the purpose to provide a transnational and interdisciplinary approach capable of overcoming the segmentation that currently characterizes the study of relations between Christianity and Islam in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Mediterranean. We aim to create a network that will help to provide a comprehensive understanding of past relations between Christianity and Islam in the European context through the addressing of three main research problems: otherness, migration and borders.

Presentation

The COST Action “Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750)” [CA 18129] is launching a call for a conference “Soldiers, prisoners and converts between permeable borders in the Mare Nostrum (16th-18th centuries)”. The event that we are disseminating is being organised within the this project, which as the purpose to provide a transnational and interdisciplinary approach capable of overcoming the segmentation that currently characterizes the study of relations between Christianity and Islam in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Mediterranean. We aim to create a network that will help to provide a comprehensive understanding of past relations between Christianity and Islam in the European context through the addressing of three main research problems: otherness, migration and borders. To know more about the project, please visit our website https://is-le.eu.

The plurality of religions and legal-normative systems coexisting in the Mediterranean spaces has generated complex configurations which escape unilateral considerations and call into question the differentiation between distinct “cultural universes”. On the contrary, even in times of strong conflict, exchanges, connections and zones of contact between Christian and Muslim societies are highlighted from multiple perspectives. In particular, a now impressive bibliography concerns the theme of forced migration and mobility, on the one side, and transcultural interactions and religious conversions, on the other one. The purpose of the congress is to involve scholars from different countries in a comparative and multidisciplinary discussion.

With this in mind, the purpose of the congress is to involve scholars from different countries in a comparative and multidisciplinary discussion. By focusing and interweaving individual and group trajectories, as well as institutional actors and legal-regulatory productions, papers may answer some of the following questions:

What are the rules, legal resources, political-religious, diplomatic and legal discourses of Mediterranean mobility and migration? How are they produced, used and negotiated? Which formal and informal practices do they give rise to?

• What kind of contacts, crossings, exchanges, conflicts, disputes characterize mobility taking into account the different geographical, religious and socio-cultural areas across the Mediterranean?
• What are the individual and group paths within and across confessional and religious boundaries? What are the actions, the discursive constructions, the processes of definition and redefinition to construct one’s own identity-making instances in conditions of political-religious permeability and/or confessional closures and stiffening of affiliations?
• What role do religion and law play?
• What are the (legal, political, economic, diplomatic, iconographic and literary) forms and instruments of captivity and redemption?

Dates and place

Dates of the Conference: 28th-29th May 2020

Place: Palermo (Italy)

Scientific Coordinators

• Giovanna FIUME (giovanna.fiume@unipa.it)
• Rita FOTI (rita.foti@unipa.it) 
• Bruno POMARA (bruno.pomara@uv.es)

Deadline and details

Researchers interested to participate in the conference are invited to submit their proposals with a title, an abstract (no more than 500 words) and a brief bio (maximum of 15 lines)

before 7 February 2020

to: islepalermo@gmail.com.

For more information please see the attached PDF or visit the link: https://is-le.eu/calls/conference-soldiers-prisoners-converts-between-permeable-borders-mare-nostrum-16th-18th-centuries/ 

Applicants are kindly requested to send their applications to islepalermo@gmail.com