Our Institute sets out to provoke a rethinking of the history of the Middle Ages, c. 1000–1500, through the optic of the medieval Mediterranean, emphasizing questions of religious and ethnic pluralisms, cultural contact, hybridity, transculturation, and the negotiation of identities. As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has recently become the object of innovative scholarship in various disciplines. Rather than focusing on the internal structure and development of discrete entities (political states, ethnic or religious groups, cultural traditions), these approaches tend to shift their attention to a study of interconnectedness and dynamics of interaction. In contrast to traditional accounts that cast the Middle Ages as the lull between the loss of the culture of classical antiquity and its "rebirth" in Renaissance and that define Modernity as the product of a northern European Enlightenment, our approach reveals that many "modern" ideas, institutions, and technologies in fact first crystallized in the medieval Mediterranean. A short list of examples might include: municipal republics, double-entry accounting, neo-Aristotelian logic, vernacular literature, paper, rice cultivation, universities, and codified public law (on the Roman model).

The emphasis on contact and circulation invites a nuanced reconsideration of recent (and not-so-recent) conceptualizations of modes of interaction between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish societies. Paradoxically, the medieval Mediterranean—often cast as a site of the origin of Christian-Muslim hostility, in the form of the Crusades—has also been idealized as the site of "convivencia," the harmonious coexistence of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic cultures. The facility with which ideas and technologies traversed the Mediterranean is testament to the commonalities underlying the superficial, if dramatic, contrasts between ethnic and religious groups. By moving from an essentialist to a process-oriented understanding and emphasizing the variety of interconfessional interactions in the medieval Mediterranean, we situate "Holy War" as one pole of a spectrum that includes co-existence, accommodation, and outright cooperation.

At the crossroads of northern European, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, linked (via long-distance trade) to South and East Asian influences, the Mediterranean played a key role in the emergence of the modern West in ways the emerging field of Mediterranean Studies has begun to document. Our contribution to a revised genealogy of modernity begins with an insistence on understanding medieval phenomena—the early commercial development of centers like Venice or Genoa, the recovery of Greek learning and Aristotelian method through the translation of Arabic texts—not teleologically (tracing the origins of the rise of capitalism or the sources of "western" scientific method) but synchronically (acknowledging the vitality, for example, of Latin Europe's economic and cultural links to the Islamic world). Only through such situated analyses of medieval Mediterranean versions of phenomena such as identity construction, cultural and confessional interactions, modes of political organization, commercial exchange, colonialism, and perceptions of others can we effectively assess and understand these phenomena in subsequent periods.

Detailed program information will be available on this site after Thanksgiving.

Email inquiries are welcome, but please thoroughly review the Institute Information Letter before contacting us.

Click for information regarding our 2008 and 2010 NEH Summer Institutes.

Aims:

 

• To encourage understanding of cultural interaction and creation in the multi-confessional Medieval Mediterranean.
• To encourage interdisciplinary research and teaching that crosses and challenges national and ecumenical divisions.
• To give college and university professors and highly-qualified graduate students the opportunity to study and to work collaboratively under leading scholars in a range of fields. 
• To give participants the opportunity to use the archives, libraries and facilities available in Barcelona.

About the Institute:

• Organized by the Mediterranean Seminar, a forum for promoting research and teaching in the emerging discipline of Mediterranean Studies
• Our third NEH Summer Insitute on Mediterranean Studies to be held in Barcelona (click for detailed information and reviews of our 2008 and 2010 Institutes)
• Once again, our faculty includes some of the most creative and exciting scholars in the field.
• Includes a varied program of presentations, seminars, collaborative and technical workshops, field trips, aprés-Institute, and plenty of time for independent reading and research

Faculty & Directors:

• Brian A. Catlos (Religious Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder; History, University of California Santa Cruz), co-Director & Faculty
• Sharon Kinoshita (Literature, University of California Santa Cruz), co-Director & Faculty
• Charles Burnett (History of Islamic Influences, Warburg Institute), Faculty
• O. Remie Constable (History, Notre Dame University), Faculty
• Peregrine Horden (Medieval History, University of London), Faculty
• Karla Mallette (Romance Languages & Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan), Faculty
• G.A. (Gerard) Wiegers (Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam), Faculty
• Fernando Salmón (History of Science, Universidad de Cantabria), Faculty

Important Dates:

1 March 2012 - Email and postmark dealine for your full application.
2 April 2012 All applicants will be notified of their status (accept, reject, alternate).
6 April 2012 Deadline for Summer Scholars to accept or decline their offer.
2 July 2012 – Institute Begins
27 July 2012 – Institute Concludes

 

Important: Generally, US citizens who wish to stay in Spain for tourist or business purposes for up to 90 days do not need a visa. They should travel with a round trip air ticket and a passport valid for a minimum of six months. To confirm this, and for visa information for foreign visitors to Spain, click here.

Disclaimer: Information provided on this site and the documents linked to it is provisional and subject to change without notice at the organizers’ discretion.  Neither the NEH, UCSC, nor the Mediterranean Seminar take responsibility for the content of external internet sites.