CES Workshop. “Toward a Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean.”

Since the 1949 publication of Fernand Braudel’s landmark two-volume work, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, research on the subject has grown considerably as scholars continue to unpack, scrutinize, and present alternatives to Braudel's master narrative of the “Great Sea.” Yet despite the growing interest in Mediterranean studies among specialists of the medieval and early modern periods, scholars working on the modern Mediterranean are still few and far between. This workshop aims to address this gap in the scholarship in order to reconsider the “Mediterranean” as a possible unit of analysis for the modern period. What is Mediterranean modernity? What does it mean to be modern? Are we modern yet? Or is modernity a disruption of the Mediterranean framework? These are just a few of the questions that will form the basis of our conversation in this workshop.

Professor Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III is professor emeritus and research professor of history and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Burke has published extensively on modern Middle Eastern and North African history and is among the foremost scholars of the modern Mediterranean. His most recent publications include The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam (UC Press, 2014) and “Toward a Comprehensive History of the Modern Mediterranean, 1750-1919” (Journal of World History, 2012).

To receive the workshop readings ahead of the event please contact Susan Abraham or Harry Kashdan. 

Sponsors: CES, CMENAS, ISP, Mediterranean Topographies Interdisciplinary Workshop