Dreaming of a Cosmopolitan Sea: The Mediterranean in History

Catalog description

This course addresses the relations and interconnectedness between the different Mediterranean cultures from the Early Modern period (16th century) to nowadays. We will analyse the ways in which historians and anthropologists have used the Mediterranean as a privileged terrain to rethink the communication, circulation and exchanges between the Christian and Muslim worlds, often represented as fundamentally antagonistic. Although violence is pervasive in the Middle Sea's history, we will see that it was not always religiously motivated. We will thus explore other forms of tension such as wars between empires aspiring for global dominion (Spain and the Ottoman Empire), privateering, the exploitation of captive labour force, slave trade and the wars of colonial conquest. A theatre of multiform conflicts, the Mediterranean was also a crossroads where economic, commercial and political interests intersected. We will thus examine the ways in which these interactions contributed to the formation of multi-religious states and favoured religious syncretism and linguistic and cultural hybridizations. We will finally investigate how nationalism and colonialism compartmentalized the Mediterranean space. Aside from scholarly works, our material will include literature and films. KU course # HIST 319