Modern Mediterranean: A New Research Network Presents itself.pdf (original) (raw)

2019, Online Publication: https://modernmediterranean.net/about/

Due to current conflicts, crises and wars, the Mediterranean is back on the agenda of the Humanities and the social sciences. Yet, in the field of modern history this paradigm is almost absent. The DFG research network “The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 | 2000” therefore aims to transcend the fragmentation of separate historiographies and to get a more integrated view of the modern period of this region. It focuses on the dynamics and transformations of the region in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of taking the Mediterranean as a natural given, the network will explore how this space was invented and shaped in the modern age. Against myths of Mediterranean unity, continuity and singularity, the region is conceived as a contact zone between Africa, Asia and Europe that was connected to and is comparable with other regions of the world. The members and guests of the network meet at international Mediterranean research centres (Deutsches Historisches Institut Rom, Deutsch-Italienisches Studienzentrum Venedig, École française de Rome, Orient Institut Beirut, Orient Institut Istanbul, Zentrum für Mittelmeerstudien Bochum, Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin) in order to explore themes which are at the core of current debates on Mediterranean history: spatial and temporal configurations, mobility and borders, empires and religions, port cities and islands, transregional connections and global entanglements. The discussions of the network will result in a series of publications, among them an anthology collecting texts representing the new historiography of the modern Mediterranean. In this way, Mediterranean history will not only be presented as an innovative field of historical research but also as a new approach that is able to combine European and non-European perspectives in a productive way helping us to understand what is at stake in this region at the moment and in the future.