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26 books match the query 'Mediterranean Region'

cover of A Calm Fire: and Other Travel Writings

A Calm Fire

and Other Travel Writings

Philippe Jaccottet

Seagull Books, 2018

In these times of heartbreaking violence, clashing religions, and a seemingly never-ending narrative of dichotomy between East and West, wonder at the religion and culture of the Middle East can be in short supply. However, the lyrical and philosophical travel writing in Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet’s Calm Fire rekindles it, lifting us out of our ordinary locales and stories of violent conflict in the Middle East. Jaccottet’s poetic descriptions explore the rich cultural worlds of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel, giving us uncommon glimpses into countries so often associated with turmoil, death and destruction. Expressing a poet’s admiration for the ecstasies of faith and a philosopher’s skepticism of these seemingly transformative feelings, Jaccottet dives deep into the religious cultures of the places he visits.
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Ultimately, whether in his native Swiss Alps or among the cedars of Lebanon, the same question pervades Philippe Jaccottet’s work: How should we live? More than a simple palliative to a depressing news cycle, Calm Fire captures a true sense of place by celebrating and pondering ways of life through the immersive experience of travel.
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cover of A History of the Vandals

A History of the Vandals

Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen

Westholme Publishing, 2012

The First General History in English of the Germanic People Who Sacked Rome in the Fifth Century AD and Established a Kingdom in North Africa

The fifth century AD was a time of great changes in the Mediterranean world. In the early 400s, the Roman Empire ranged from the lowlands of Scotland to the Upper Nile and from Portugal to the Caucasus. It was almost at its widest extent, and although ruled by two emperors—one in the West and one in the East—it was still a single empire. One hundred years later, Roman control of Western Europe and Western North Africa had been lost. In its place, a number of Germanic kingdoms had been established in these regions, with hundreds of thousands of Germanic and other peoples settling permanently inside the former borders of the Western Roman Empire.

            One of the most fascinating of these tribes of late antiquity were the Vandals, who over a period of six hundred years had migrated from the woodland regions of Scandinavia across Europe and ended in the deserts of North Africa. In A History of the Vandals, the first general account in English covering the entire story of the Vandals from their emergence to the end of their kingdom, historian Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen pieces together what we know about the Vandals, sifting fact from fiction. In the middle of the fifth century the Vandals, who professed Arianism, a form of Christianity considered heretical by the Roman emperor, created the first permanent Germanic successor state in the West and were one of the deciding factors in the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. Later Christian historians described their sack of Rome in 455 and their vehement persecution of Catholics in their kingdom, accounts that were sensationalized and gave birth to the term “vandalism.”

            In the mid-sixth century, the Vandals and their North African kingdom were the first target of Byzantine Emperor Justinian’s ambitious plan to reconquer the lost territories of the fallen Western Empire. In less than four months, what had been considered one of the strongest Germanic kingdoms had been defeated by a small Roman army led by the general Belisarius. Despite later rebellions, this was the end of the Germanic presence in North Africa, and in many ways the end of the Arian heresy of Christianity. For the Romans it was the incredibly successful start of the reconquest of the lost lands of the Western Empire.
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cover of Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum

Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum

Jean Bussière

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2017

In the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum are more than six hundred ancient lamps that span the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE, most from the Roman Imperial period and largely created in Asia Minor or North Africa. These lamps have much to reveal about life, religion, pottery, and trade in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Most of the Museum’s lamps have never before been published, and this extensive typological catalogue will thus be an invaluable scholarly resource for art historians, archaeologists, and those interested in the ancient world.
 
Reflecting the Getty's commitment to open content, Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum is available online at http://www.getty.edu/publications/ancientlamps and may be downloaded free of charge in multiple formats, including PDF, MOBI/Kindle, and EPUB, and features zoomable images and multiple views of every lamp, an interactive map drawn from the Ancient World Mapping Center, and bibliographic references.
 
For readers who wish to have a bound reference copy, a paperback edition has been made available for sale.
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cover of Ancient Maritime Loan Contracts

Ancient Maritime Loan Contracts

Peter Candy

University of Michigan Press, 2025

Ancient Maritime Loan Contracts studies the first millennium of the standard form contracts at the heart of ancient long-distance trade, from the fifth century BCE to Justinian. Maritime loan contracts recorded the terms of agreement on which a creditor lent a sum of money to a merchant or carrier to finance the purchase of a cargo for a trading expedition overseas. They were the lifeblood of the long-distance trade in bulk commodities that flourished in the Mediterranean and Black Seas and were also among the first private agreements to be fully committed to writing. From at least the fifth century BCE, these contracts were highly standardized in their terms, containing boilerplate clauses in a tried-and-tested construction. Maritime loan contracts continued to be used to finance maritime trade until the late Middle Ages, when they were only finally superseded by the contract of marine insurance. 

Combining a wide variety of papyrological, epigraphic, and legal evidence, Peter Candy’s framework illustrates the significance of these contracts in both their economic and legal context. By using an interdisciplinary approach, Ancient Maritime Loan Contracts addresses important questions about how maritime trade was financed in the context of the ancient economy; the response of individual legal cultures to maritime loan contracts; and the relationship between international commercial practice and legal development in the ancient world.
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cover of Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean

Botanical Icons

Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean

Andrew Griebeler

University of Chicago Press, 2024

A richly illustrated account of how premodern botanical illustrations document evolving knowledge about plants and the ways they were studied in the past.
 
This book traces the history of botanical illustration in the Mediterranean from antiquity to the early modern period. By examining Greek, Latin, and Arabic botanical inquiry in this early era, Andrew Griebeler shows how diverse and sophisticated modes of plant depiction emerged and ultimately gave rise to practices now recognized as central to modern botanical illustration. The author draws on centuries of remarkable and varied documentation from across Europe and the Mediterranean.
 
Lavishly illustrated, Botanical Icons marshals ample evidence for a dynamic and critical tradition of botanical inquiry and nature observation in the late antique and medieval Mediterranean. The author reveals that many of the critical practices characteristic of modern botanical illustrations began in premodern manuscript culture. Consequently, he demonstrates that the distinctions between pre- and early modern botanical illustration center more on the advent of print, the expansion of collections and documentation, and the narrowing of the range of accepted forms of illustration than on the invention of critical and observational practices exclusive to modernity.
 
Griebeler’s emphasis on continuity, intercultural collaboration, and the gradual transformation of Mediterranean traditions of critical botanical illustration persuasively counters previously prevalent narratives of rupture and Western European exceptionalism in the histories of art and science.
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cover of Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder: Griffin Cauldrons in the Preclassical Mediterranean

Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder

Griffin Cauldrons in the Preclassical Mediterranean

Nassos Papalexandrou

University of Texas Press, 2021

The eighth and seventh centuries BCE were a time of flourishing exchange between the Mediterranean and the Near East. One of the period’s key imports to the Hellenic and Italic worlds was the image of the griffin, a mythical monster that usually possesses the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. In particular, bronze cauldrons bore griffin protomes—figurative attachments showing the neck and head of the beast. Crafted in fine detail, the protomes were made to appear full of vigor, transfixing viewers.

Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder takes griffin cauldrons as case studies in the shifting material and visual universes of preclassical antiquity, arguing that they were perceived as lifelike monsters that introduced the illusion of verisimilitude to Mediterranean arts. The objects were placed in the tombs of the wealthy (Italy, Cyprus) and in sanctuaries (Greece), creating fantastical environments akin to later cabinets of curiosities. Yet griffin cauldrons were accessible only to elites, ensuring that the new experience of visuality they fostered was itself a symbol of status. Focusing on the sensory encounter of this new visuality, Nassos Papalexandrou shows how spaces made wondrous fostered novel subjectivities and social distinctions.

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cover of Civil Becomings: Performative Politics in the Amazon and the Mediterranean

Civil Becomings

Performative Politics in the Amazon and the Mediterranean

Raúl Acosta

University of Alabama Press, 2020

An anthropological approach to an emerging form of transnational political engagement by independent civil society organizations

Activism and advocacy have drawn academic interest as alternative ways of achieving collective ends outside established political institutions. However, there has been very little theoretical attention aimed at the interconnections between the two spheres. In Civil Becomings: Performative Politics in the Amazon and the Mediterranean, Raúl Acosta examines the manner in which progressive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists act in a more intermingled and processual way than scholars have previously acknowledged.

Acosta focuses on networks from the vantage point of two NGOs: one in Brazil that concentrated on environmental issues in the Amazon and another in Barcelona called the Mediterranean Social Forum. The focus of this research is not on organizational aspects of collaboration, but rather on the practices and contexts in which such cooperation occurs. Three major aspects of activist and advocacy networks are analyzed: their communicative characters, their collective performances of the political, and the negotiations they engage in between vernacular and cosmopolitan values.

This volume theorizes the cooperative actions of activist and advocacy networks as legitimating processes for the work of participating groups. In doing so, Acosta argues, they address the issues that justify a joint campaign or effort and also crucially underpin each participating collective as a worthy organization of civil society.

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cover of Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean: Social Life Under Empire

Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean

Social Life Under Empire

Philip A. Harland

University of Chicago Press, 2026

A fresh perspective revealing how ethnographic thinking shaped the sociocultural landscape of the ancient Mediterranean.
 
With this book, Philip A. Harland presents a large-scale rereading of social and cultural life in the eastern part of the ancient Mediterranean in particular, examining social interactions among peoples, from culturally dominant groups to minority populations. Harland assesses literary and archaeological evidence to yield fresh insights into the dynamics of ethnic relations in the region and to explore how the population navigated questions of identification, differentiation, categorization, stratification, criminalization, and population production.
 
Harland considers encounters between peoples as well as their representations of one another, reframing the social landscape of the ancient world by focusing on the influence and ubiquity of the ethnographic imagination between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE. Drawing insights from anthropology, sociology, and postcolonial studies, Harland offers close readings of papyri, inscriptions, monuments, sculptures, and other materials that reflect interactions between different populations at all levels of society. He gives careful attention to the perspectives of enslaved, immigrant, and subject peoples, including Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, and Judeans under Persian, Hellenistic, or Roman rule.
 
Offering an innovative reading of social and cultural life from the ground up, this book reveals the extent to which ethnographic thinking structured the sociocultural landscape of the ancient world.
 
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cover of Fernando Ortiz: Caribbean and Mediterranean Counterpoints

Fernando Ortiz

Caribbean and Mediterranean Counterpoints

Edited by Stephan Palmié

HAU, 2023

Cross-regional scholarly dialogue inspired by the work of the pioneering Cuban scholar. 

Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969) coined the term “transculturation” in 1940. This was an early case of theory from the South: concepts developed from an explicitly peripheral epistemological vantage point and launched as a corrective to European and North American theoretical formulations. What Ortiz proposed was a contrapuntal vision of complexly entangled processes that we, today, would conceptualize as cultural emergence.

Inspired by Ortiz, this volume engineers an unprecedented conversation between Mediterraneanists and Caribbeanists. It harnesses Ortiz’s mid-twentieth-century theoretical formulations to early twenty-first-century issues pertinent to both regions, including migration, territorial sovereignty, and cultural diversity. The contributors explore this perspective (arguably formed during Ortiz’s youth in late nineteenth-century Menorca) in a dialogue between scholars of the contemporary Caribbean and Mediterranean to enable novel analytics for both regions and to more broadly to probe the promises and limits of Ortiz’s contribution for contemporary anthropological research and theorizing.
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cover of Hellenism in Late Antiquity

Hellenism in Late Antiquity

G.W. Bowersock

University of Michigan Press, 1996

The extraordinary adaptability and durability of Greek culture in times of momentous change is revealed in this book, as G. W. Bowersock seeks to interpret Hellenism in a predominantly Christian world. In this effort he sheds new light on a late paganism that has often been seen as moribund and shows it to have been unexpectedly vigorous. Hellenism, comprising the language, thought, mythology, and images of the Greeks, contributed fundamentally to the evolution of early Christianity. It had spread across the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean for many centuries before Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of the Byzantine government. But Hellenism served no less to disseminate and strengthen paganism--a role that has hitherto been little appreciated or studied. The local traditions of Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Near East survived in most cases by sharing common forms of expression with the Christians. Hellenism clearly allowed late pagans of widely differing traditions to communicate with each other. At the same time it gave to both Christianity and Islam a pagan context that enjoyed much greater public recognition then than now. And so the author shows that Hellenism illuminates the wholeness of the late antique world in the East, the interaction of its paganism and its Christianity. Dionysus and Christ flourished together. ". . . Bowersock has given us a new unifying perspective for the turbulent religious history of four centuries--the idea of a common cultural medium within (and against) which differing religious traditions evolved and inter-penetrated." --New York Times Book Review ". . . a formidable achievement . . . [an] elegant and powerfully original book." --Times Literary Supplement G. W. Bowersock is Professor of Ancient History in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.
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cover of In and Of the Mediterranean: Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies

In and Of the Mediterranean

Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies

Michelle M. Hamilton

Vanderbilt University Press, 2014

The Iberian Peninsula has always been an integral part of the Mediterranean world, from the age of Tartessos and the Phoenicians to our own era and the Union for the Mediterranean. The cutting-edge essays in this volume examine what it means for medieval and early modern Iberia and its people to be considered as part of the Mediterranean.
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cover of Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean

Lives of the Great Languages

Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean

Karla Mallette

University of Chicago Press, 2021

The story of how Latin and Arabic spread across the Mediterranean to create a cosmopolitan world of letters.
 
In this ambitious book, Karla Mallette studies the nature and behaviors of the medieval cosmopolitan languages of learning—classical Arabic and medieval Latin—as they crossed the Mediterranean. Through anecdotes of relationships among writers, compilers, translators, commentators, and copyists, Mallette tells a complex story about the transmission of knowledge in the period before the emergence of a national language system in the late Middle Ages and early modernity.

Mallette shows how the elite languages of learning and culture were only tenuously related to the languages of everyday life. These languages took years of study to master, marking the passage from intellectual childhood to maturity. In a coda to the book, Mallette speculates on the afterlife of cosmopolitan languages in the twenty-first century, the perils of monolingualism, and the ethics of language choice. The book offers insight for anyone interested in rethinking linguistic and literary tradition, the transmission of ideas, and cultural expression in an increasingly multilingual world.
 
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cover of Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity

Mediterranean Crossings

The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity

Iain Chambers

Duke University Press, 2008

The cultural theorist Iain Chambers is known for his historically grounded, philosophically informed, and politically pointed inquiries into issues of identity, alterity, and migration, and the challenge postcolonial studies poses to conventional Western thought. With Mediterranean Crossings, he challenges insufficient prevailing characterizations of the Mediterranean by offering a vibrant interdisciplinary and intercultural interpretation of the region’s culture and history. The “Mediterranean” as a concept entered the European lexicon only in the early nineteenth century. As an object of study, it is the product of modern geographical, political, and historical classifications. Chambers contends that the region’s fundamentally fluid, hybrid nature has long been obscured by the categories and strictures imposed by European discourse and government.

In evocative and erudite prose, Chambers renders the Mediterranean a mutable space, profoundly marked by the linguistic, literary, culinary, musical, and intellectual dissemination of Arab, Jewish, Turkish, and Latin cultures. He brings to light histories of Mediterranean crossings—of people, goods, melodies, thought—that are rarely part of orthodox understandings. Chambers writes in a style that reflects the fluidity of the exchanges that have formed the region; he segues between major historical events and local daily routines, backwards and forwards in time, and from one part of the Mediterranean to another. A sea of endlessly overlapping cultural and historical currents, the Mediterranean exceeds the immediate constraints of nationalism and inflexible identity. It offers scholars an opportunity to rethink the past and present and to imagine a future beyond the confines of Western humanistic thought.

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cover of Mediterranean Security at the Crossroads: A Reader

Mediterranean Security at the Crossroads

A Reader

Nikolaos A. Stavrou, ed.

Duke University Press, 1999

The Mediterranean is a diverse and volatile region, especially in its post—Cold War state, and it is entering a new phase of uncertainty. Twenty-two sovereign states surround this body of water: six are part of the Western alliance system, three have engaged in or supported terrorism, and others face serious internal tensions arising from territorial claims and ethnic strife. An expansion of a previous issue of Mediterranean Quarterly, this book brings together a distinguished array of diplomats, politicians, scholars, and policymakers representing twelve countries and a variety of interests and ideas to discuss this unique region and to explore its prospects for peace and stability.
New essays in this expanded volume include a reflection by former President Jimmy Carter on the causes of war and their links to human suffering, a prophetic analysis of the post-Cold War environment in the Mediterranean by former U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali, an essay on the strategic significance of Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean by the former Turkish ambassador to the United States, and, in light of recent events in Kosovo and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, a piece on the issue of Balkan security by the editor. Introducing the volume is a foreword by former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz and an essay focusing on NATO in the Mediterranean by Javier Solana, the Secretary General of NATO. Central to the Mediterranean debate is the question of NATO’s role in its future. Some contributors suggest that the southward expansion of NATO could be an important first step toward stability, while others argue that the Mediterranean should be treated as an integrated geostrategic region, with a central place in Western security considerations. Other essays discuss the comparative experience of UNPROFOR and IFOR in the former Yugoslavia; the role of Italy in the future of the Mediterranean; the economic challenges facing the Middle East; and the role of Israel and its relationship to its neighbors.
Mediterranean Security at the Crossroads is one of the first in-depth looks at this region from a strictly post-Cold War perspective.

Contributors. Hanan Bar-On, Ted Galen Carpenter, Jimmy Carter, Charles G. Cogan, Gregorios Demestichas, Boutros-Boutros Ghali, Carlo Jean, Nuzhet Kandemir, Nicolai A. Kovalsky, William H. Lewis, Peter H. Liotta, John A. MacInnis, Phebe Marr, Matthew Nimetz, George P. Schultz, Javier Solana, Richard F. Staar, Nikolaos A. Stavrou, George Vella, W. Bruce Weinrod

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cover of Mediterranean in Dis/order: Space, Power, and Identity

Mediterranean in Dis/order

Space, Power, and Identity

Rosita Di Peri and Daniel Meier, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2023

Mediterranean in Dis/order reveals the connection between space and politics by examining the role that space has played in insurgencies, conflicts, uprisings, and mobilities in the Mediterranean region. With this approach, the authors are able to challenge well-established beliefs about the power structure of the state across different disciplines (including political science, history, sociology, geography, and anthropology), and its impact on the conception, production, and imagination of space in the broader Mediterranean. Further, they contribute to particular areas of studies, such as migration, political Islam, mobilization, and transition to democracy, among others. The book, infusing critical theory, unveils original and revelatory case studies in Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and the EU Mediterranean policy, through a various set of actors and practices—from refugees and migrations policies, to Islamist or students’ movements, architectural sites, or movies. This multidisciplinary perspective on space and power provides a valuable resource for practitioners interested in how space, context, and time interact to produce institutions, political subjectivities, and asymmetries of power, particularly since the turning point of the Arab uprisings. The book also helps readers understand the conditions under which the uprisings develop, giving a clearer picture about various national, regional, and international dynamics.

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cover of Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean

Music and Gender

Perspectives from the Mediterranean

Edited by Tullia Magrini

University of Chicago Press, 2003

Although scholars have long been aware of the crucial roles that gender plays in music, and vice versa, the contributors to this volume are among the first to systematically examine the interactions between the two. This book is also the first to explore the diverse, yet often strikingly similar, musics of the areas bordering the Mediterranean from comparative anthropological perspectives.

From Spanish flamenco to Algerian raï, Greek rebetika to Turkish pop music, Sephardi and Berber songs to Egyptian belly dancers, the contributors cover an exceedingly wide range of geographic and musical territories. Individual essays examine musical behavior as representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of gender identities; compare men's and women's roles in specific musical practices and their historical evolution; and explore how music and gender relate to such issues as ethnicity, nationality, and religion. Anyone studying the musics or cultures of the Mediterranean, or more generally the relations between gender and the arts, will welcome this book.

Contributors:
Caroline Bithell, Joaquina Labajo, Jane C. Sugarman, Carol Silverman, Goffredo Plastino, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Edwin Seroussi, Marie Virolle, Terry Brint Joseph, Deborah Kapchan, Karin van Nieuwkerk, Svanibor Pettan, Martin Stokes, Philip V. Bohlman
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cover of Provenance Research for Mediterranean Antiquities: Methods and Resources

Provenance Research for Mediterranean Antiquities

Methods and Resources

Judith Barr

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2026

This practical volume is the first to gather resources specific to the provenance of Mediterranean antiquities in an accessible, comprehensive guidebook.

The first of its kind, this book is an accessible, comprehensive primer of methods and resources for researching the provenance of Mediterranean (Greek, Roman, and Etruscan) antiquities. In addition to outlining effective strategies for documentation and investigation, the volume features an annotated guide to key archives, databases, and twentieth-century dealers to facilitate a broad spectrum of research endeavors. Building upon a decade-long review of the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, it draws together instructive case studies, legal perspectives, and practical experience to provide an efficient reference for museum professionals, scholars, collectors, and students. The authors aim to emphasize the need for diligent provenance research and to shorten the learning curve for such projects.

The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/provenance-research and includes zoomable illustrations. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book.
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cover of Resisting Europe: Practices of Contestation in the Mediterranean Middle East

Resisting Europe

Practices of Contestation in the Mediterranean Middle East

Edited by Raffaella A. Del Sarto and Simone Tholens

University of Michigan Press, 2020

Resisting Europe conceptualizes the foreign policies of Europe—defined as the European Union and its member states—toward the states in its immediate southern “neighborhood” as semi-imperial attempts to turn these states into Europe’s southern buffer zone, or borderlands. In these hybrid spaces, different types of rules and practices coexist and overlap, and negotiations over meaning and implementation take place. This book examines the diverse modalities by which states in the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa (MENA) reject, resist, challenge, modify, or entirely change European policies and preferences and provides rich empirical evidence of these contestation practices in the fields of migration and border control, banking and finance, democracy promotion and telecommunications. It addresses the complex question of when and how MENA states capitalize on their leverage and interdependence in their relationships with Europe and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Europe-Middle East relations, while engaging with broader debates on power and interdependence, order and contestation in international relations. While a contribution on the practices of resistance and contestation of MENA states vis-à-vis European policies and preferences in this geopolitically significant region was overdue, this volume leads the way for subsequent studies that seek to overcome the constraints of exceptionalism so characteristic of research of the Middle East, Europe/the European Union, and certainly of their relationship.
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cover of Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Subaltern History

Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean

A Subaltern History

Edited by Odile Moreau and Stuart Schaar; preface by Edmund Burke III

University of Texas Press, 2016

Subaltern studies, the study of non-elite or underrepresented people, have revolutionized the writing of Middle Eastern history. Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean represents the next step in this transformation. The book explores the lives of eleven nonconformists who became agents of political and social change, actively organizing new forms of resistance—against either colonial European regimes or the traditional societies in which they lived—that disrupted the status quo, in some cases, with dramatic results. These case studies highlight cross-border connections in the Mediterranean world, exploring how these channels were navigated.

Chapters in the book examine the lives of subversives and mavericks, such as Tawhida ben Shaykh, the first Arab woman to receive a medical degree; Mokhtar al-Ayari, a radical Tunisian labor leader; Nazli Hanem, Kmar Bayya, and Khiriya bin Ayyad, three aristocractic women who resisted the patriarchal structures of their societies by organizing and participating in intellectual salons for men and women and advocating social reform; Qaid Najim al-Akhsassi, an ex-slave and military officer, who fought against French and Spanish colonial expansion; and Boubeker al-Ghandjawi, a nearly illiterate trader who succeeded, though his diverse connections, in establishing important relations between the Moroccan sultan and the representative of the British government. Although based on individual and local perspectives, Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean reveals new and unrecognized trans-local connections across the Muslim world, illuminating our understanding of these societies beyond narrow elite circles.

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cover of The Borders of Responsibility: Migration Control in the Mediterranean Sea

The Borders of Responsibility

Migration Control in the Mediterranean Sea

Kiri Olivia Santer

Duke University Press, 2026

While migrants face many dangers in attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea—from drowning to dying of dehydration—they also confront an elaborate legal system that is designed to return them to their countries of origin. In The Borders of Responsibility, Kiri Olivia Santer outlines the architecture of these legal systems and how they help Europe evade legal responsibility for rescuing migrants. Focusing on legal agreements between Italy and Libya that have resulted in the systematic interception of migrants, Santer shows how Europe’s liberal identity is belied by legal agreements that let migrants die at sea or that send them back to dangerous, exploitative situations in post-Gaddafi Libya or their home countries. Law, she argues, is the tool that enables states to affect control beyond territory, whilst disappearing their responsibility for violence across border assemblages. Through ethnographic fieldwork with migrants, lawyers, policy makers, and humanitarian workers, Santer shows how the law is too often used as an instrument of violence against migrants, who fall outside of conventional structures of legal rights.
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cover of The History of Cartography, Volume One: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean

The History of Cartography, Volume One

Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean

Edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward

University of Chicago Press, 1987

By developing the broadest and most inclusive definition of the term "map" ever adopted in the history of cartography, this inaugural volume of the History of Cartography series has helped redefine the way maps are studied and understood by scholars in a number of disciplines.

Volume One addresses the prehistorical and historical mapping traditions of premodern Europe and the Mediterranean world. A substantial introductory essay surveys the historiography and theoretical development of the history of cartography and situates the work of the multi-volume series within this scholarly tradition. Cartographic themes include an emphasis on the spatial-cognitive abilities of Europe's prehistoric peoples and their transmission of cartographic concepts through media such as rock art; the emphasis on mensuration, land surveys, and architectural plans in the cartography of Ancient Egypt and the Near East; the emergence of both theoretical and practical cartographic knowledge in the Greco-Roman world; and the parallel existence of diverse mapping traditions (mappaemundi, portolan charts, local and regional cartography) in the Medieval period.

Throughout the volume, a commitment to include cosmographical and celestial maps underscores the inclusive definition of "map" and sets the tone for the breadth of scholarship found in later volumes of the series.
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cover of The Isthmus of Corinth: Crossroads of the Mediterranean World

The Isthmus of Corinth

Crossroads of the Mediterranean World

David K. Pettegrew

University of Michigan Press, 2016

The narrow neck of land that joins the Peloponnese with the Greek mainland was central to the fortunes of the city of Corinth and the history of Greece from the classical Greek period to the end of the ancient world. Corinth was perfectly situated for monitoring land traffic between Athens and Sparta and overland movements between eastern and western seas.
 
David Pettegrew’s book offers a new history of the Isthmus of Corinth from the Romans’ initial presence in Greece during the Hellenistic era to the epic transformations of the Empire in late antiquity. A new interpretation of the extensive literary evidence outlines how the Isthmus became the most famous land bridge of the ancient world, central to maritime interests of Corinth, and a medium for Rome’s conquest, annexation, and administration in the Greek east. A fresh synthesis of archaeological evidence and the results of a recent intensive survey on the Isthmus describe the physical development of fortifications, settlements, harbors, roads, and sanctuaries in the region. The author includes chapters on the classical background of the concept isthmos, the sacking of Corinth and the defeat of the Achaean League, colonization in the Late Roman Republic, the Emperor Nero’s canal project and its failure, the growth of Roman settlement in the territory, and the end of athletic contests at Isthmia. The Isthmus of Corinth offers a powerful case study in the ways that shifting Mediterranean worlds transformed a culturally significant landscape over the course of a millennium.
 

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cover of The Mediterranean Incarnate: Region Formation between Sicily and Tunisia since World War II

The Mediterranean Incarnate

Region Formation between Sicily and Tunisia since World War II

Naor Ben-Yehoyada

University of Chicago Press, 2017

In The Mediterranean Incarnate, anthropologist Naor Ben-Yehoyada takes us aboard the Naumachos for a thirty-seven-day voyage in the fishing grounds between Sicily and Tunisia. He also takes us on a historical exploration of the past eighty years to show how the Mediterranean has reemerged as a modern transnational region. From Sicilian poaching in North African territory to the construction of the TransMediterranean gas pipeline, Ben-Yehoyada examines the transformation of political action, imaginaries, and relations in the central Mediterranean while detailing the remarkable bonds that have formed between the Sicilians and Tunisians who live on its waters.
           
The book centers on the town of Mazara del Vallo, located on the southwestern tip of Sicily some ninety nautical miles northeast of the African shore. Ben-Yehoyada intertwines the town’s recent turbulent history—which has been fraught with conflicts over fishing rights, development projects, and how the Mediterranean should figure in Italian politics at large—with deep accounts of life aboard the Naumacho, linking ethnography with historical anthropology and political-economic analysis. Through this sophisticated approach, he crafts a new viewpoint on the historical processes of transnational region formation, one offered by these moving ships as they weave together new social and political constellations.
 
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cover of The Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology

The Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology

Ann E. Killebrew

SBL Press, 2013

The search for the biblical Philistines, one of ancient Israel’s most storied enemies, has long intrigued both scholars and the public. Archaeological and textual evidence examined in its broader eastern Mediterranean context reveals that the Philistines, well-known from biblical and extrabiblical texts, together with other related groups of “Sea Peoples,” played a transformative role in the development of new ethnic groups and polities that emerged from the ruins of the Late Bronze Age empires. The essays in this book, representing recent research in the fields of archaeology, Bible, and history, reassess the origins, identity, material culture, and impact of the Philistines and other Sea Peoples on the Iron Age cultures and peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The contributors are Matthew J. Adams, Michal Artzy, Tristan J. Barako, David Ben-Shlomo, Mario Benzi, Margaret E. Cohen, Anat Cohen-Weinberger, Trude Dothan, Elizabeth French, Marie-Henriette Gates, Hermann Genz, Ayelet Gilboa, Maria Iacovou, Ann E. Killebrew, Sabine Laemmel, Gunnar Lehmann, Aren M. Maeir, Amihai Mazar, Linda Meiberg, Penelope A. Mountjoy, Hermann Michael Niemann, Jeremy B. Rutter, Ilan Sharon, Susan Sherratt, Neil Asher Silberman, and Itamar Singer.
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cover of The Spirit of Mediterranean Places

The Spirit of Mediterranean Places

Michael Butor

Northwestern University Press, 1997

This book gathers French writer Michel Butor's essays on his travel in the Mediterranean. Included are pieces on Cordova, Istanbul, Salonica, Delphi, Crete, and northern Italy, as well as an extended essay on Egypt--where, when he was 24, Butor spent a year teaching French in a secondary school. Michel Butor is one of the leading exponents of the avant-garde writing that emerged in France in the 1950s .
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cover of This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies

This Abled Body

Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies

Hector Avalos

SBL Press, 2007

The burgeoning field of disability studies has recently emerged within the humanities and social sciences and, as a result, disability is no longer seen as the biological condition of an individual body but as a complex product of social, political, environmental, and biological discourses. The groundbreaking essays of This Abled Body engage biblical studies in conversation with the wider field of disability studies. They explore the use of the conceptual category “disability” in biblical and Near Eastern texts and examine how conceptions of disability become a means of narrating, interpreting, and organizing human life. Employing diverse approaches to biblical criticism, scholars explore methodological issues and specific texts related to physical and cognitive disabilities. Responses to the essays by established disability activists and academics working in the social sciences and humanities conclude the volume. The contributors are Martin Albl, Hector Avalos, Bruce C. Birch, Carole R. Fontaine, Thomas Hentrich, Nicole Kelley, Janet Lees, Sarah J. Melcher, David Mitchell, Jeremy Schipper, Sharon Snyder, Holly Joan Toensing, Neal H. Walls, and Kerry H. Wynn.
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