The Spring 2022 Mediterranean Seminar Workshop
Friday & Saturday, 6 & 7 May 2022
Rutgers University-Newark
“Crisis and Displacment”
The intense movement of people around the Mediterranean has dominated the media in recent years. Images of families crossing land and sea borders and of overcrowded boats capsizing at sea are often meant to draw attention to the “crisis” that the European Union and its member states have faced with the arrival of thousands of people coming from the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Yet crises such as wars, expulsions and population transfers, climate anomalies, and pandemics have resulted in the mass displacement of populations across the Mediterranean throughout millennia. Moreover, these population displacements have not always or exclusively followed a northward or westward direction coming from the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean. One only has to think of the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews (1492) and Moriscos—Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism—(1609), or the mass migration of millions of Europeans in their colonial enterprises in North Africa, to know that this contemporary narrative emphasizing Europe as main receiver of refugees should be understood against a more deeply historicized background. Taking Crisis (environmental, political, disease-related, humanitarian, etc…) as our point of departure, this workshop proposes to study human displacements as a Mediterranean phenomenon that can and should be examined diachronically and spatially. Taking the Mediterranean as a geographical unit, this longue durée approach seeks to highlight continuities and ruptures, as well as connections that are often obscured by temporal constraints and national narratives.
Program & Papers
All sessions will take place at the Express Newark, 54 Halsey Street, Newark NJ.
All papers are copyright the author and are not to be copied, distributed or cited without express written permission by same.
To obtain a paper that does not have a pdf link, contact the presenter directly. Click on the participant name to see their bio.
Friday 6 May 2022
Location: Shine Portrait Studio, Express Newark, 3rd Floor
9:00—9:30 Coffee and Registration
9:30-10:00 Opening Remarks
• Dr. Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark
• Dr. Jacqueline Mattis, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers-Newark
• Mayte Green-Mercado (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
• Brian A. Catlos (Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder) and Sharon Kinoshita (Literature, University of California Santa Cruz), The Mediterranean Seminar
• The Participants
10:00-11:15 Workshop Paper #1
”Muslim Migration and Nation-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia and Turkey”
• Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
Respondent: Joshua White (History: University of Virginia)
11:30–12:45 Workshop Paper #2
“Subverted Passing: The Gendered Agency of Moriscos”
• Reem Taha (Comparative Literature, UC Santa Barbara)
Respondent: Mayte Green-Mercado (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
12:45–2:00 Lunch (for speakers and registered participants)
2:00–3:15 Workshop Paper #3
“Africans on the Move and the Critique of Slaveholding’s New Humanitarianism”
• Tryon Woods (Crime & Justice Studies: UMass, Dartmouth)
• Paul Khalil Saucier (Critical Black Studies, Bucknell University)
Respondent: Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Anthropology, Columbia)
3:30—4:30 Keynote Presentation:
"Rethinking the Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Exchange in the Contemporary Civilizationist World Context”
• Aslı Iğsız (Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University)
Introduced by: Mayte Green-Mercado (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
4:30—5:30 The Mediterranean Seminar Book Prizes
Honoring: Hannah Barker, Claire Gilbert, Mayte Green-Mercado, Daniel Hershenzon. Joshua White, and Konstantina Zanou
• Brian A. Catlos & Sharon Kinoshita
7:00— Dinner: Casa d'Paco
Saturday 7 May 2022
Location: Express Newark, Lecture Hall
9:30—10:00 Coffee and Registration
10:00—11:00 Keynote Presentation
“The Promise (and Peril) of a Sonic Whole: Music and the Construction of the Post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora”
• Sylvia Alajaji (Music: Franklin and Marshall)
Introduced by: Gary Farney (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
11:15–12:30 Round Table 1
Environmental determinism or human agency/ collapse or resilience–how can these be disentangled in the history of Mediterranean society and culture?
Moderator: Brian A. Catlos
1. Nukhet Varlik (History, Rutgers-Newark) “Plague, Climate, and Migration: Rural Depopulation in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire During the Little Ice Age”
2. Elektra Kostopoulou (Federated Department of History, NJIT-Rutgers Newark)
3. Fabien Montcher (History, Saint Louis University) “Moving Mediterranean Sovereignties and Islands of Knowledge”
4. Hannah Barker (SHPRS, Arizona State University) “Who Takes the Blame and Who Takes the Consequences? Human Agency and the Second Plague Pandemic”
5. Amy Remensnyder (History, Brown) “Piracy, Abandoned Islands, and Environmental Change”
12:30–1:30 Lunch
1:30—2:45 Round Table 2
Can we talk about a discrete “Mediterranean” phenomenon of human displacement that might provide a novel analytical model to study different cases comparatively?
Moderator: Sharon Kinoshita
1. Maria Hadjipolycarpou (Classics, University of Illinois) “A Displaced Literary Tradition and its Afterlives”
2. Carlo Trombino (History, Università degli Studi di Palermo) “Comparing global slave markets; comparing Mediterranean slaveries (16th -18th centuries)”
3. Claire Gilbert (History, Saint Louis University) “Mapping Multilingualism in the Mediterranean”
4. Travis Bruce (History, McGill University) “The Baḥriyyūn: Movement, Migration, and Exile in the Early Medieval Mediterranean”
5. Joana Buerger (History, University of Washington) “The Mediterranean as Space of Continuity in the Face of Political Rupture”
6. Hourie Tafech (Global Studies: Rutgers-Newark) “The Mediterranean: An Institutionalized Migration”
3:00—4:15 Round Table 3
”How do crises that provoke displacements shape literary cultural and artistic expressions?”
Moderator: Brian Murphy (History, Rutgers University-Newark)
1. Kathryn Hain (History, Northeast Community College) “How the Han Chinese and Ancient Indians Remembered their Talented Greek and Roman Slaves”
2. Joshua White (History, University of Virginia) “A Tale of Sorrow and Joy”
3. Mohamad Ballan (History, Stony Brook University) “The Nasrid College: Crisis, Migration and Cultural Efflorescence in Late Medieval Granada”
4. Alex Seggerman (Arts, Culture and Media: Rutgers-Newark) “Palermo, City of Syncretism: Cultural Heritage Discourse and Contemporary Migration”
5. Khadija Harsolia (Soka University of America) “Iberian Muslims: A Crisis of Being and Belonging”
6. Seher Rowther (Languages, Chapman University) “Memories of Fire and Water in a Qasida Morisca and Radwa Ashour’s Granada Trilogy”
4:15—4:30 Concluding Remarks
• Brian A. Catlos, Sharon Kinoshita, Mayte Green-Mercado & participants
5:00—6:00 Concert
Rutgers University-Newark Middle East Orchestra
• Ahmet Erdoğdular, director
7:00— Dinner: Mompou
Participants:
• Susan Abraham (Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, University of Virginia)
• Harry Anderson (Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder)
• Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer (History - Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies , New York University
• Abir Bouazizi (Civilizations, Higher institute of Civilization of Tunis
• Ayse Cicek Unal (History, Yale University)
• Peter Kitlas (Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University)
• Saad Latif (History, Rutgers University - Newark)
Practica
COVID:
Current regulations at Rutgers-Newark state ""All indoor events require attendees to show proof of full vaccination or a COVID-19 negative PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to the event and must remain compliant with published COVID-19 protocols."
If you are not affiliated with Rutgers-Newark you must complete the following form prior to attending on 6 May 2022.
Accommodation:
Participants are lodged at The Robert Treat Hotel, 50 Park Pl, Newark, NJ 07102, tel.: (973) 622-1000, which is a 5-minute walk from the workshop location.
Arrival:
From Newark Liberty International Airport take bus G028 from terminal B (15 mins approx.) or taxi or ride-share (10 mins).
From Penn Station via train (30 mins).
Dinners
Dinners are included for program participants and registered attendees. Drinks are not included.
(Friday): Casa d'Paco at 73 Warwick Street Newark, NJ 07105.
(Saturday): Mompou at 77 Ferry Street, Newark, NJ (Ironbound Section)
Sponsors, Organization & Support:
This workshop is organized by Mayte Green-Mercado (History, Rutgers University-Newark), Sharon Kinoshita (University of California Santa Cruz), and Brian A. Catlos (University of Colorado Boulder).
The Spring 2022 workshop is hosted by Rutgers University-Newark with the support of Office of the Chancellor, Rutgers University-Newark, Rutgers Newark School of Arts and Sciences (SASN), Federated Department of History, English Department, Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, Center for Migration and the Global City, Mediterranean Displacements Project, the CU Mediterranean Studies Group & the Mediterranean Seminar.